Today's audiences will abandon a site that loads too slowly. Here are some tips to make sure you can keep up with your customers.

By Imad Mouline, Chief Technology Officer, Gomez

Imad Mouline

A decade ago, there was an "8-second rule," the time a person would wait for a web page to load before leaving. Now surveys show this is less than three seconds.

Some executives can't imagine that a few seconds wait time can hurt their business. This is a mistake, according to a 2008 report from technology research firm Aberdeen Group, "Customers are Won or Lost in One Second," which said that a one-second delay could mean a 7% reduction in completed sales. For a $100,000-a-day e-commerce site, that's $2.5 million in lost yearly revenues. More