Geeking with Greg: Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0
After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.
Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.This conclusion may be surprising — people notice a half second delay? — but we had a similar experience at Amazon.com. In A/B tests, we tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue.People do not like to wait. Do not make them.
Ok, so here’s my issue with Amazon.com. I still do 90% of my online shopping with them, but the one usability tick that drives me insane is that they will not let you choose the number of search results displayed on a page.
Yes, people like fast. But people also like choice. Especially when they’re weighing the consequences of a half-second delay against the unimaginable joy of not having to click the “next” button fifty f’ing times to get to the desired result of buying that goddamned stapler they should have just picked up at Office Depot.
Just saying.