Web performance specialist Gomez has launched a free tool that calculates the financial impact of web page load times.

The FAST calculator is built from real user web experience data that correlates web page load times with page abandonment rates. By entering some basic data about a company’s online operations —-such as conversion rates, monthly visitors, average transaction value size and web page load time — the tool generates a custom report that includes a twelve month projection of how much additional revenue a site could potentially capture with performance improvements.

“Consumers expect immediate response regardless of where in the world they might be accessing a site from, what sort of device they are using and whose network(s) they might be on,” says Bob Paul, president and COO of Gomez’s parent, Compuware Corporation. “Competitors are a second away, so organizations can’t give customers any excuse to click away, as this tool clearly illustrates.”

The underlying data supporting the tool was calculated using page abandonment rate data aggregated across more than 150 web sites, 34,000 pages and over 150 million page views captured between November 10 and December 10, 2009. Response time and abandonment rates are based on tags installed on live web sites across a variety of industries including retail, travel, financial services and more. Gomez says the data calculates the relationship between abandonment rates and response time in one-second intervals between one and 20 seconds.

Analysis by Gomez of the top UK internet retailers between 7 and 21 December found that none of the top 20 succeeded in meeting the five second page load threshold at which sales begin to drop off.

Readers can use the FAST calculator online on Compuware’s website.

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