Statistics show that, without a compelling reason, the average user will not wait for much more than 10 seconds for a page to load. So does that explain why your visitors seem to spend less than 5 seconds in your site? Probably your site is taking too long to load thus putting off visitors.

As you design your site, loading time should always be a priority if your site is to be an effective business tool. Balancing usability and aesthetics is a delicate matter when creating a fast loading site.

Below are tip that you can use while designing your fast loading website.
1. Use images sparingly. Remember, images may enhance the appearance of a website but it greatly increases its loading time.
2. Use and optimize your HTML. You have to create simple and elegant sites using plain HTML, CSS and few images.
3. Minimize animated gifs and flash usage
4. Use background images
5. Avoid using Javascript and flash scripts
6. Avoid using multimedia files
7. Use Templates. Using templates will not only ensure uniformity throughout your site but will enable subsequent pages load faster because the structural images will have cached and thereby reducing the load times significantly

uniformity throughout your site but will enable subsequent pages load faster because the structural images will have cached and thereby reducing the load times significantly

As you design your site, loading time should always be a priority if your site is to be an effective business tool. Balancing usability and aesthetics is a delicate matter when creating a fast loading site.