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Are You a Sub-10 Second Website?

Posted by John Saddington on Jan 19, 2009

churchcrunch_speed_testInitial impressions are important. As my friend Rick Smith says: “You never get a 2nd chance at a first impression”.

True.

One of the most important “first impressions” is how fast the user can recieve and interpret your content. Faster is better. Period.

I have found that a number of church and ministry websites (and blogs) are extremely content heavy on the initial landing page and/or homepage, requiring the new and regular user to wait. This is probably not the best idea.

But how do you diagnose your speed and figure out what parts of content is slowing down your site?

Try the Full Page Test by Pingdom.

Enter your URL and visually see how your site loads, order, and basic overall stats including:

  • Total Load Time – Total time it takes ot load the page including all objects.
  • Total Objects – Total number of objects loaded that are related to the page.
  • External Objects – Total number of objects from external domains.
  • [X]HTML/RSS/XML/CSS – Total number for each.
  • Scripts – Total scripts running on your site.
  • Images – Total number of images
  • Plugins – Total number of plugins
  • And more…

human3rror_speed_testIt’s not the most comprehensive, but it’ll do the trick for your first jab at it. Take a look at my two sub-10 second websites, ChurchCrunch and Human3rror in the thumbnails.

There are some obvious rooms for improvement, namely the number of scripts and images. I use a lot on ChurchCrunch and I need to spend more time optimizing my images to be more web-ready.

So how does your blog or ministry site roll? Is it a Sub-10 winner?

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John Saddington

John is the Chief Editor @ The 8BIT Network and Senior Blog Junkie here at ChurchCrunch.He enjoys Triple-Tall Americanos, developing Wordpress Themes, and a few other Random Things.

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30 Responses to “Are You a Sub-10 Second Website?”

  1. Leo Wurschmidt
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 1:04 am

    Sweet. Sub-10s, but like you said, there is always room for improvement. I have used the speed report in the FF web developer toolbar. It seems to have a pretty comprehensive report.

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:17 am

      i'm like morpheus: show me.

      Reply
      • Leo Wurschmidt
        Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 11:05 pm

        Haha. As long as I do not have to take the blue pill. I figure you will have seen it, but maybe someone else has not. Do I see a guest post in my future?

        Reply
        • human3rror
          Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 11:33 pm

          if you've got time. obviously you're pretty busy these days?

          Reply
          • Leo Wurschmidt
            Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 11:53 am

            Yeah, actually I am going to have to pass on it. Thanks for the past opportunities, though.

  2. Gabe Taviano
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 1:07 am

    Great speed test for sure. Glad to see I'm at 6 seconds, hoping to stay that way!

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:16 am

      i bet it doesn't…!

      :)

      Reply
  3. Jim
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 2:20 am

    I'm at a 6.4 on both. but a lot of objects…hmph.

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:13 am

      objects. smodgjects.

      Reply
  4. Marcus Hackler
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 3:19 am

    9.5 seconds

    Reply
  5. Eric Frisch
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 5:56 am

    This is an important thing that most folks (including me most of the time!) don't think about. My blog loaded in 2.8, but my music website took 8.1.

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:12 am

      2.8. wow. that's excellent…!

      Reply
      • Eric Frisch
        Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:40 am

        Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised!

        Reply
  6. human3rror
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:47 am

    always feels nice…!

    Reply
  7. CoffeeWithChris
    Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Hmmm, loks like I've done a great job on my church website 3.9 seconds. But it also looks like I've got some work to do on my blog, 17 seconds…

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 2:12 pm

      well, it's good to know, right? that's where we have to start… ;)

      Reply
  8. djbyron
    Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:27 am

    Awesome find! Bookmarking this tool now…

    I failed on the sub 10 second thing hitting 13 seconds but that is a stock theme so I'm not too discouraged. When I make my initial 'ground-up' theme run next month I'll aim for a fast load!

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 10:59 am

      woot! let me knwo how that goes!

      Reply
  9. Aaron
    Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 2:57 am

    10.8 sec. :/

    Reply
  10. Aaron
    Sunday, February 1, 2009 at 4:53 am

    My web host is completely inconsistent. I thought I was making progress (~8sec) and now I'm right back above 10sec again. weaksauce.

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Sunday, February 1, 2009 at 5:04 am

      DOH! averages help…

      :)

      Reply
      • Aaron
        Friday, March 6, 2009 at 2:03 am

        I tested several times in the last hour and I'm finally sub-7 seconds on the load-time now. (Shortening blogs using the –more– code and switching web hosts really helped!)

        Thanks for providing a great deal on Dreamhost!

        Reply
  11. theschu
    Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 7:20 am

    My blog loaded at around 9 seconds. Pretty crappy since I've been hand coding all my sidebar info.
    Any suggestions?

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 1:26 pm

      I'd have to see the results…!

      Reply
  12. CoffeeWithChris
    Monday, March 2, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Was relieved to see my new web project come in at 7 sec. ( http://YouthMinBlog.com )

    Reply
  13. human3rror
    Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    of course. i know you're a busy busy guy.

    Reply

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