Why is response time so important? Would it hurt your visitors to wait just a few more seconds for your page to appear? Well, to cut a long story short - Yes, it will hurt your visitors' experience and it will hurt your site.

When you are online, every second counts. The abundance of websites on various topics, located only a few clicks away from each other is why your site can not afford to lose visitors and prospective clients over such a little thing as bad response time.

So how much is too much when it comes down to website response time? About 3 seconds is all it takes for most people out there to leave your site and go to your competitors. It seems like an unreasonably short amount of time, but to the online shopper this is like waiting in a queue Precisely the reason why people shop online in the first place.
Poor response time can cause problems on so many levels. The consequences for an online retailer or any site doing business online can range from a few unhappy customers to negative brand perception and massive loss of potential buyers. High-spending shoppers are like to get the best value for their money, this including quick page loading and hassle free service.

A part from the back-hander on your sales, there is a high change of collateral damage if the matter is not located and addressed on time. If you are paying a decent amount of money for online advertising your ROI will dramatically decrease sticking another blow on your business. That spent doubles when you try to regain your previous presence and traffic by putting more money and effort in ads.
If the search engine bots are not able to access your site and index new content, it is likely your website to suffer long term from poor search engine traffic. Google's spam engineer, Matt Cutts, shares his 2 cents on GoogleWebmasterHelp while giving a few pointers how to avoid bad loading time.

Check your website's response time by typing your URL and selecting a remote test location.