Every millisecond counts

Christmas carols in the air I mean airwaves as I am still in lockdown and doing work from home. I laughed so hard when I came across a revised version of an old Christmas song. The title is: “Oh, the Internet is slow – The Net is Slow.”

Oh, the network outside is frightful,

But on campus, it’s so delightful,

Our packets have nowhere to go,

Net is slow, net is slow, net is slow.

It doesn’t show signs of stopping,

All our packets, our hosts are dropping;

Bandwidth is turned way down low,

Net is slow, net is slow, net is slow.

When we finally connect to a site,

It’s time to go back to the dorm;

But if I could stay here all night,

I could submit their Web form.

The network is slowly dying,

And, I fear, we’re still denying,

But as long as Sprint is the way to go,

Net is slow, net is slow, net is slow.

“Wait lang!” That is the usual thing we tell people when they want us to do something or to get something, and they are on the impatient side. In other places, the expression is “Wait a second.” I have had this instinctive feeling, but this suspicion was confirmed a long time ago. Google engineer Arvind Jain said, “Subconsciously, you don’t like to wait; every millisecond matters.”

A study indicates that will reduce their frequency to visit a website if a competitor website is faster by 250 milliseconds. A millisecond is a thousandth of a second. So, if the website is the backbone of any business today in this digital world, then this is huge. Of course, this assumes that all things are equal, meaning there is sufficient internet connection, or this would have been a different story.

When my kids, Bryan and wife Maxine launched their Japanese ice cream, I saw the concern on Bryan’s face. I asked him, “what is the matter?” and he says, “Dad, today we launched our ice cream, and the website crashed!” I smiled a little and fought back the temptation of saying, “Hey, that is a good problem, and this means people are logging in and ordering – too many people!” That would come out so insensitive because these young people understand the value of a website to their business. It may not be evident to many, but this is a business emergency for young people. Good thing I have an in-house geeky-nerdy entrepreneurial-minded technician in the person of my daughter, Rachel. She sprang into action. And in a few hours, Bryan and Maxine’s Kurimu Ice Cream was back to business, and the orders kept pouring in.

For geezers like me, who may not understand why something like a website crash was an “emergency,” these young entrepreneurs knew the implication. And then Bryan sent me material that explains why the situation had to be resolved immediately. It seems like studies have indicated that 47 percent of customers expect websites to load within two seconds. 52 percent of customers attest that the fast website contributes to their loyalty.

I certainly am one of them. The sites I visit are always sites that load the fastest, and those that do not I would never visit again. 79 percent of customers do not return to a slow website, a single second delay in load time shows 11 percent fewer page views, seven percent loss in conversions, and 60 percent decrease in customer satisfaction.

I am happy that my son and daughter-in-law’s business is doing very well, but I can also see how hard they work every day because speed is essential. Speed today is a game changer. There seems to be no more time to do things and activities traditional businesses used to do. You have an idea; you do it. You may not even have time to conduct FGD’s (focus group discussions), but you present your MVP (minimum viable product). And then you make adjustments and improve on process and systems.

Well, speaking subjectively as a proud dad, my kids‘ Japanese ice cream is delicious, and I was there behind them, saying, “Launch it.” “Push it out.” “Market it.” “Hurry!” “No time to spare!” And of course, “wake Rachel up and have her fix your crashed website.” She did. It’s working well, and it is now loading very fast. And that is what business is all about these days.

(Connect with Francis Kong at www.facebook.com/franciskong2. Or listen to “Business Matters” Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. over 98.7 DZFE-FM ‘The Master’s Touch’, the classical music station.)