With the soft economy and highly savvy Internet consumers, your Website’s performance matters more than ever.

Today’s sites are increasingly dependent upon state-of-the-art technologies such as shopping tools, videos, games, and other interactive functions that attract attention and move visitors to action. Unfortunately, some of these highly promising features can sometimes fail to work properly, causing delays that may make your visitors abandon your site and move to your competition.

According to a recent Gomez web performance study, “the average online shopper expects your pages to load in two seconds or less, down from four seconds in 2006; after three seconds, up to 40% will abandon your site.”

And, in a study to measure the impact of delay on performance, Microsoft Bing found that a two-second delay resulted in a 1.8% drop off in queries, 3.75% reduction in clicks, more than a 4% loss in satisfaction, and worst of all, a 4.3% loss in revenue per visitor. For a site like Bing, that’s a significant amount of lost business!

The bottom-line is that your website’s performance is too important to be ignored, so take the time to evaluate it. Here are some quick tips to get started:

• Determine how well your site stacks up against your competition and other industry leaders.
• Make sure your site delivers a consistent customer experience regardless of browser type.
• Solicit customer feedback.
• Regularly review your site’s performance against your company’s overall business objectives.