Statistical Shopping Load Rates

I wish there could've been a larger sample of the population but the results are interesting. With the advent of the relatively cheap home computer, whatever the brand, and broadband type technologies it is unsurprising that there is not only a rise in online shopping but a load-time impatience factor. Of course, this online shopping trend is dangerous if people like amazon and others continue to use those individual pricing strategies/programs that track returning customer's willingness to pay levels, and exploit them.

Websites face four-second cut-off
Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.

The research by Akamai revealed users' dwindling patience with websites that take time to show up.

It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

The time it took a site to appear on screen came second to high prices and shipping costs in the list of shoppers' pet-hates, the research revealed.

Akamai consulted those who shop regularly online to find out what they like and dislike about e-tailing sites. About half of mature net-shoppers - who have been buying online for more than two years or who spend more than $1,500 (£788) a year online - ranked page-loading time as a priority.

It found that one-third of those questioned abandon sites that take time to load, are hard to navigate or take too long to handle the checkout process.

The four-second threshold is half the time previous research, conducted during the early days of the web-shopping boom, suggested that shoppers would wait for a site to finish loading.

To make matters worse, the research found that the experience shoppers have on a retail site colours their entire view of the company behind it.

About 30% of those responding said they formed a "negative perception" of a company with a badly put-together site or would tell their family and friends about their experiences.

Further research by Akamai found that almost half of the online stores in the list of the top 500 US shopping sites take longer than the four-second threshold to finish loading.

The survey questioned 1,058 net shoppers during the first six months of 2006.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6131668.stm

Totally off topic here: Lana is carrying ZOD's child! OMGZ!

Update on Nana.

Things are not looking good. It appears her condition has deteriorated a little, her lung infection isn't getting any better.

*large sigh*

What will be, will be. She lived a good and full life, I am not afraid for her sake or mine. However, I am a little worried about the rest of the family's reaction. I know that others in the family are already thinking and talking about the possibilities of what her will reveals. I don't care about all that, I had her company, memories of good times, and a couple of things (an owl pendant and a "spoon ring" that she got from her mother) that she gave me while I was a child that I will treasure forever. And my emphasis is on the intangible elements of the previous sentence.

Whatever happens, I feel a reconsideration of my beliefs about what happens to us after we die coming. I was exposed to a few different traditions of belief as a child, primarily Catholic. I've thought about other possibilities, reincarnation, nothingness, even the theory brought about in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game Series, that we are reduced down to our philotic string components. Then there is the various mythology or ancient religious beliefs, Egyptian, Norse, and Greco-Roman being the ones I've investigated primarily.

What are your opinions of the afterlife? What influenced the formation of your beliefs?