Best format for displaying rendered time on a webpage

Question

Hello,

I've started to add the time taken to render a page to the footer of our internal web applications. Currently it appears like this

Rendered in 0.062 seconds

Occasionally I get rendered times like this

Rendered in 0.000 seconds

Currently it's only meant to be a guide for users to judge whether a page is quick to load or not, allowing them to quickly inform us if a page is taking 17 seconds rather than the usual 0.5. My question is what format should the time be in? At which point should I switch to a statement such as

Rendered in less than a second

I like seeing the tenths of a second but the second example above is of no use to anyone, in fact it just highlights the limits of the calculation I use find the render time. I'd rather not let the users see that at all! Any answers welcome, including whether anything should be included on the page.

Thanks

Answer 1

Rather than relying on your users to look at the page footer and to let you know if the value exceeds some patience threshold, it might be a better idea to log the page render times in a log file on the server. Once you have all that raw data, you can look for particular pages that tend to take longer than normal to render.

With more detailed logging, you could also measure the elapsed times in database queries or whatever if your web app relies on external systems.

Answer 2

"Rendered instantly" sounds way better than "Rendered in less than a second".

Answer 3

I'm not sure there's any value in telling users how long it took for the server to render the page. It could well be worth you logging that sort of information, but they don't care.

If it takes the server 0.001 of a second to draw the page but it takes 17 seconds for them to load it (due to network, javascript, page size, their rubbish PC, etc) their perception will be the latter.

Then again adding the render time might help you fend off the enquiries about any percieved slowness with a "talk to your local network admin" response.

Given that you know the accuracy of your measurements you could have the 0.000 text be "Rendered in less than a thousandth of a second"

Answer 4

I think I over-emphasized it was for the users.

I know by using in trace in the web.config I can get accurate information on page render times along with times for accessing the database.

We have in the past had problems with applications running too slowly over the network although it's now fixed I'm adding the label to new applications so that users are aware it is something we are taking seriously and it's a very simple indicator for the developers.

Taking all that into account I like "Rendered Instantly" and write alot of sense so I'll accept both your answer and kokos'.

Thanks

EDIT: Didn't know I couldn't accept 2 answers, so I'll accept the Keith's as that is more inline with what I'm trying to do. I'd vote you up kokos but I don;t have the rep! Sorry!