There are many things in a blog that can turn people off: sometimes it’s the content, sometimes it’s how it looks, but sometimes it’s how long it takes until the blog is fully loaded. I think more and more people are used to faster internet connection and are becoming less and less patient to wait for the page to load: gone are the days waiting for something to appear on a dial-up internet connection.
Bloggers face a bit of a dilemma: should one put a lot of widgets on sidebars to enliven the blog, or keep it simple and ‘light’, so that it loads quickly. My opinion has been that loading time should be considered as an important factor in designing blogs: I suppose I’m just impatient, but I don’t like to wait for pages to load, and I don’t want to let someone go through that on my blog. Also, the problem with many of the available widgets is that they are primarily for the benefit or self-satisfaction of the blogger, and not necessarily any help for the visitor.