Slow Down Your Web Site

There is so much talk right now about getting the web sites we build to work at speed. They must load quickly and react to user interaction quickly because running at lightning speed is the goal. Well I’m going to say that it’s not that black and white and that speed is often the wrong approach when it comes to a good user experience.

Think about if you were on an express train, one of those trains that runs straight through many of the stations without stopping. Imagine that as it ran through a station you caught a look at someone standing on the platform that looked like someone you knew. The problem is that the train was going so fast that you couldn’t get enough of a look at the person to tell if it was who you thought it was. You’re now left wondering, wanting to go back to have another look and all together frustrated.

Obviously the speed and responsiveness of a web site is important, but not always. A good example would be an input box that allows the user to input their name which has a save button next to it. The save button uses AJAX to post the users name back to the server behind the scenes. When the user presses the save button a little moving icon shows to inform the user that the save is taking place. Once the save is finished, a message appears to state it’s success. Often, the save works so quickly that the little moving icon that was meant to inform the user of the save shows and hides at the blink of an eye. The problem here is that the user is confused with something that flashed onto the page, what was it? Was it a message? So did my name save or was the thing that flashed up something important?

So all I’m saying here is that if you’re going to give feedback to your users allow them time to receive and understand that feedback before you take it away. It only takes half a second of delayed time, that can easily be done in JavaScript, to allow your users the benefit of that feedback that you took the time to put in place anyway.

This entry was posted on June 11, 2010 at June 11, 2010 and is filed under UI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.