%% Last Updated: - [[2021-03-30]] %% Teams frequently ask what the industry standard is for response times, wanting to make sure their applications measure up. The answer, however, is more complicated than a single number. Industry standards for response time are only useful when applications are very similar. Constantly changing technologies used in web development as well as innate differences in business processes, however, make it very difficult to extrapolate a single number that will apply to all, or even most, applications in a certain industry. The home page of one e-commerce app, for instance, might be several seconds slower than that of their main competitor. However, that doesn’t take into account the fact that their app loads a video showcasing new products. Does that mean that the development team should remove the video in order to fall in line with their competition? Well, maybe. But not necessarily. It’s a business decision that needs to be made after perhaps using focus groups to determine the impact of the video, forecasting changes in conversion rate due to it, and comparing its projected value to the effects of being slower than the competition. A/B experiments could be used to test these assumptions and gather quantifiable data to support the team decision. These factors are often not considered in the search for one number to rule them all, which is why a fixation on that number can be detrimental. Instead, I encourage project teams to brainstorm and come up with their _own_ numbers for all metrics that would be more appropriate for their application. Gathering comparative metrics from a competitor may be part of this process. ## References - [[API Load Testing - A Beginner's Guide]]