The Importance of speed of a website
How long does it take the website to load? According to, Web Performance Consultant, Jeremy Wagner, in a column for Google “Sites have more features than ever before. So much so, that many sites now struggle to achieve a high level of performance across a variety of network conditions and devices,”. The majority of people would not tolerate and wait for a website to load any more than 2 to 3 seconds. In this day and age, with modern-day internet, speed is very important, but why? Well, years ago, with the dial-up internet, people had to wait a few seconds for the page to load; that is not the case today. Why is the incremental fraction of a second so important? It’s very simple actually, it makes a very big difference.
It affects user experience, search rankings, and even sales and conversions. If a page loads slowly, many people will give up and go somewhere else. That can mean a loss of traffic to your site and a loss of dollars in your pocket. In fact, studies show that an additional two seconds of loading time can increase your site’s bounce rate by 103 percent. In addition, just 100 milliseconds of extra loading time can cause a 7 percent drop in conversion rates. Your conversion rates may suffer, and your bounce rates. A slow-loading page also can have a devastating impact on your search engine optimization, as Google uses page speed as a significant determinant in page ranking.
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1. It’s the first impression you’ll make
First impressions are essential in the success of your site. If your website loads fast, you’ve instantly made a strong first impression. It’s a quick-win for user experience! If it loads fast, your new visitor is immediately happy, that’s why it's important to get it right the first time. Nearly 80% of your potential audience isn’t coming back.
If a customer or visitor witnesses a slow website, on the other hand, it creates the impression that it is unsafe and untrustworthy, making it difficult to change that visitor’s mind and successfully flow through the funnel devised within your strategy.
2. Speed is at the top of your visitor’s list
Modern-day internet in a way sets the bar high, where anything less is just not enough. It’s clear that we all expect quick results whether we’re on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. Think about how you use the internet every day, and how you look for quick answers and immediate results. To evaluate performance, check:
- PageSpeed Insights, an online tool that shows speed field data for your site, alongside suggestions for common optimizations to improve it.
- Lighthouse, a lab tool providing personalized advice on how to improve your website across performance, accessibility, PWA, SEO, and other best practices.
Small businesses do not have the benefit of the doubt or the luxury to have a slow website as opposed to large and established companies like Facebook or Google. It’s much a safer position to be as fast as you need to from the beginning than fall behind the competition.
- The visitor’s user experience
UX design is an essential aspect of a website that can truly differentiate it from other sites and competitions. It can also be said that at its core, good UX design is about creating a fantastic and simple experience for your visitors. You've been there before. How did you feel on a website that didn’t load as fast as you wanted it too? Did you stay and wait or left feeling annoyed. That is how you don’t want your visitors to experience your site. As the technology for connectivity gets faster over the year, our attention spans are getting shorter all the time and we’re always eager to move onto the next screen, piece of content or shiny new thing enticing that mouse click or finger-jab. At the same time, our expectations are set very high and growing by the day. If a website doesn’t load in about three seconds or less, we start to question whether it’s worth the wait or not. The longer it takes, the less likely we are to follow through, regardless of our initial intentions. It's important to keep in mind two basic factors involved in positive user experience: The content must align with what they are searching for and want and it needs to be given fast. That’s why website load speed is your number one priority when it comes to user experience. People visiting your website are looking for something. Give it to them as quickly as possible. As soon as your visitors are confused or frustrated, you’ve done something wrong. And nothing frustrates us like a slow website!
- Conversions are affected by a slow website
It may come to no surprise that a slow website runs potential customers away, but did you know that Amazon ran a test on just how much they would be affected? Amazon did tests that showed they would lose $1.6 BILLION every year if they slowed down by just one second. The fact that slow speeds create higher bounce rates means that there will be a loss in sales for your business. If Amazon, a highly recognized and dependable company, stands to lose this much on a one-second decrease in speed, just imagine what impacts this will have on a much smaller sized company. You can’t afford to lose needless sales in your funnel.
- There are long-term effects of having a slow website
So, we have covered how a slow website can decrease the number of potential customers coming to and taking action within your site, but there are more that can be affected if this issue is not resolved. Customers slowly stop referring your service to others because of a poor experience. Established websites are less likely to link back to your content, which may affect SEO. It might even put people off signing up to your newsletter. These outcomes can be avoided, and damages the reputation of your business in the long run. To get your business and site on the right track it is best to resolve this mistake.
- Website speed impacts the Google rank
Google itself speaks its praise for speed, stating, “We’re striving to make the whole web fast”. The 1-10 mobile speed score (10 the fastest) is based on real-world user experience data, taking into account many factors including the relationship between page speed and potential conversion rates. This score lets you quickly see which landing pages on mobile are providing a fast experience on mobile and which need some work.
So we have talked about the issues and consequences for having a slow website, but how do you fix the problem and hopefully get the results you want. First, it’s important to understand how fast your website is. Google offers a free tool that is a good place to start. The tool is called page speed Insights. It is straightforward to use, with a color-coded scale that uncovers whether your page's speed score is fast, average or slow.
Here are a few ways to improve the speed of your site.
- Optimize your images
Images need to be sized properly to improve the loading speed of your pages. Oversized images affect the speed of the site, and deciding to implement smaller sized pictures can have a positive effect on the experience on your website visitors. You can save precious seconds by simply compressing them before adding them to your site. There is a vast list of options when it comes to compressing images for your site. Most graphics programs like Photoshop offer you the "Save for Web" option. You can use this to adjust the file size while maintaining optimum quality. TinyPNG is another option that can compress your images for you. It's easier to implement this from the beginning as opposed to searching through every page and post you've ever written.
- Employ Content Distribution Networks
Content Distribution Networks can have a major positive effect on your page’s loading speed. They are essentially server networks that work together to share the load of delivering content. With CDNs, your site is stored on numerous servers in different places. Users access the server that's closest to where they are, which speeds up your page's loading time on their device. There are a number of companies that offer CDN services.
- Take advantage of Cache
Plug-ins on your content management system like WordPress can help. By installing plug-ins that are designed to cache the latest versions of pages on your site browsers won’t need to generate a page every single time it's shown to visitors, reducing your load time in the process. It is good to be aware, however, that browsers automatically cache bundles of information, such as images and JavaScript files, for this purpose. You can usually extend the length of time it takes for your cache to expire by adjusting the settings within the template of the site you're building; loading your pages faster for the returning users for significant lengths of time.