You know your self that undue waiting for a site to load because of reduced loading times is horrible for any conversions. This is something that you know is critical because it only makes a certain amount of common sense. Reducing the browser loading time of most sites is not that involved, but you do need to know how to do it - and we present you with some proven strategies.
It is very easy to measure your load time for any of your sites. Also consider that if you make changes, then you will not have a way of knowing if what you did made it better or worse if you cannot readily tell. There are many different tools online that you can use to check the speed of your site so that you are sure of your speed and know how long your site actually takes to load.
Popups will not cause problems with loading speeds, but they will cause problems with many of your visitors - bounce rates - not good. If you are thinking about using them, then just test them out and see the impact on your metrics. Any of the different applications using a popup concept will not adversely impact your loading times, though. Also, who your market audience is will also come into play with the issue of making your visitors angry, or whatever.
For blogs, this whole affair becomes much easier due to the abundance of plugins, and yes there is a cache plugin to help you. Cache is your friend because what it does is take data and keep it more easily accessible for use. So the cache plugin for blogs will help your site to become cached as much as possible, and that will create a very noticeable effect for your loading times. Just do a quick Google search for cache plugins, and you will find a few that are very good.
Do not be lazy and ignore how fast or slow your site loads, and if you are going for search engine rankings then this becomes even more important. Once you get this factor right, you'll see for yourself how your visitors respond back more positively.