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Response time still matters by Kristoffer Bohmann
Slow response time remain an issue on the Web even for users with high-speed Internet connections.

Speedy bank account information

Andrew Lazzaro from Vanguard asks Kristoffer:

I was reading through your article Response Time Still Matters. In that article you referenced Nielsen's guidelines: The standard guidelines for response times are (Nielsen 1999, page 42):

0.1 second (one tenth of a second). Ideal response time. The user doesn't sense any interruption.
1 second. Highest acceptable response time. Download times above 1 second interrupt the user experience.
10 seconds. Unacceptable response time. The user experience is interrupted at an alarming high rate and the user is likely to leave the site or system.

These numbers are highly useful when planning server capacity. From reading various articles, it appears these guidelines are more for users who are surfing around looking for information and then being able to retain someone on your site once when they happen to your site to dive deeper into the info they were looking for.

In your opinion, would these guidelines still apply to someone who is looking up their bank account information. That is, they have registered for access to their financial institution's web site, and have logged in and are traversing through pages that will pull-back their personal account information and display it in various ways.

In the later case you have a dedicated audience, in the other you do not... Ideally it would be great if all pages returned in 1 second or less, but would the user "subconsciously" be "okay" with waiting longer when they realize it's their own personal information they are retrieving? Maybe even greater then 10 seconds in these cases?

Kristoffer Bohmann answers:

Knowing that I just earned an extra million dollars is more important to me than page response time. In other words, getting the information users want is more important than getting it fast. So, if you can provide highly valuable account information on slow pages, users would probably use it.

Still, long response times interrupt the user experience, dedicated user or not. And yes, I think Nielsen's guidelines apply to someone who is looking up bank account information. One major problem with long response times is that users tend to forget what they initially came for when confronted with (several) slow pages.

Breaking these guidelines might be acceptable. I recommend this testing method to test if users are able to recall account information found on your system:

Ask select users to see how much they earned during the last month and perhaps also ask a few additional questions with one correct answer. Remember, users usually go to accounts to get specific answers.
Listen to users as they try to complete the task. Do they make complaints about download speed while browsing the account? If no complaints are made then download speed probably isn't an issue (or perhaps you asked the wrong questions with non-representative users).
After the test, ask users for the specific answer to your questions ("How much did you earn during the last month?"). If the answer is correct, then your system works fast enough. If incorrect, download speed might be a problem.