I think Veruca Salt said it best in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:  "I want it now… don't care how… I want it now!"  She was talking, of course, about the goose that laid chocolate eggs.  But her song and dance number was nothing if not a foreshadow of what internet users would be singing from their office chairs a mere 30 years later:  they want it now.

The "it" I'm referring to is online content.  They don't care how it works… internet users just want to get results and feedback instantly.  As Elinor Mills puts it for c|Net News.com, "Google says speed is king."  Mills is referring to comments made by Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, who spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit about Google's acquisition of YouTube, Gmail, and search result testing the company conducted.

The results of Google's tests are not surprising:  customers want speedy, responsive websites.  If they have to wait for results, Mayer said, they'll leave and go to another site.

Is there an echo in here?  Just yesterday I briefly mentioned the importance of a speedy website.  What have you done since then to increase the responsiveness and load time of your website?  Read the article above… Google was concerned about the Google Maps page when it crossed the 100 KB threshold.  Have you surveyed the size of your website lately?

Ask yourself what Veruca Salt would say about your website.  Would she send your pages the way of the bad egg?