What is considered fast load time?

I have broadband, like many others, but when you are designing a site, do you assume everyone has broadband?

What time length do you aim for so your users don't have to wait so long?
I guess it would be good to know how many of your visitors are using dialup speeds.


Thanks

You can see some of what your visitors are on through your stats, usually.

Even tho broadband is widely available these days, it's still not as widely used by the general public as it could be. You should still design with dialups in mind - that can be kind of tough, too. You should aim for 30 seconds or under on a 56K, but even I can't make that one; I never let anything go over a minute, tho.

It depends how you drive surfers to your site. I believe that you should get something interesting onto his screen within a second or two and get him/her hooked. Let the rest of the page follow on while he's looking at that.

Ace Fun what do you mean by something interesting onto the screen while the rest of the page is loading? A banner?

As I understood html and PHP, it is processed as it is read so that would need to be a banner or fancy logo up on top of the page, if I understand you right?

If the surfer has come to your site and knows he'll get something he wants the he'll probably wait for the page to load. If it's exit traffic or 404 then you've got to stop him x'ing out. If he's just got a blank page while a big table loads then he's got no incentive to stay. Just give him something that will catch his attention and pull him into your site.

There are so many people in the world still on a 56k dial-up, I think you have to try and optimise your site for these people. I aim for 30 seconds but really this is too slow to keep everyone happy.

There is a website somewhere that displays your load times for dial-up, broadband, etc. Can anyone remember what site it is?

I think there's one here - http://www.netmechanic.com/

80% of people still use dial-up :cry:

Yep, 30 seconds or less should always be your target time for 56K modems. Anything longer and they are gone.