The Real Costs of “Loading…” (Why Instant-On Web Conferencing Matters)

January 18th, 2008

Out of the many frustrations we hear from web conferencing users deployed on alternatives to Acrobat Connect Professional, starting a web conferencing meeting up tends to be one of the highest on the list. The issues vary from user to user, though software installation requirements from companies such as Webex tend to be the most common.  It’s been awhile since I’ve participated in web conferencing experiences outside of Acrobat Connect Professional, so I decided to perform a quick user-experience comparison between Connect and Webex.  My results supported what we’ve been hearing from customers:

The good news is that both solutions were able to launch users into the full meeting experience in under a minute.  However, in the several tests I ran, Webex took roughly four times the amount of time to fully load and enable user interaction relative to Acrobat Connect Professional.  Yes, we’re talking seconds, but think about the following:

Let’s assume I host 10 meetings a month.  My average meeting size is about 5 participants, so that’s 50 meeting starts per month, or 600 annually.  Taking the 600 sessions, and adding an extra 30 seconds of “loading” time, we’ve lost five hours of productivity.  Finally, take that five hours and multiply it by the number of meeting organizers in your organization.  The “instant-on” experience of Acrobat Connect Professional does add up to very real productivity gains over competing solutions.

I would love to hear what you have to say about your experiences out there with these two solutions, as well as other web conferencing solutions.

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