A fast website should be a priority for all of us, especially today, when we want everything as quickly as possible. Many sites get abandoned simply because the page takes several seconds too long to load. All of this directly affects conversions!
Why page speed matters
Fast page loading is a priority today and affects three areas in particular. We’re talking about:
- ranking factors
- quality scores in Google Ads
- user experience
Page speed is one of the ranking factors that influences your position in Google, in other words, your SEO. It’s also one of the factors Google takes into account when assessing page quality. The last element is user experience — building a site geared toward the customers of tomorrow. A fast site will be viewed far more favorably by the users who visit it.
Conversion, bounce rate, and page speed
A growing body of research shows that conversion rates are closely tied to page load time. It turns out that a page that loads just 2 or 3 seconds slower can lose as much as half of all conversions. There’s only one conclusion: page load time should be a fundamental priority for us. Bounce rate — when a user lands on a page but takes no action on it — is the bane of every website. Research shows that the bounce rate can spike sharply as early as the third second of loading.
How to measure page speed
If you want to make sure your site loads quickly and holds up during traffic spikes, it’s worth investing in load testing. This involves analyzing the behavior of the computer, peripheral device, server, network, and application involved. Testing your site will help you identify the things that need improvement in order to boost conversions — and, as a result, boost revenue too.
Factors that slow down a site
Let’s also consider the things that can slow your website down. These factors include:
- unoptimized images – uploading photos to your site at full size and very high resolution will have a huge impact on the speed of your
site; this also applies to video, which takes even longer to load
- code that doesn’t meet HTML standards – an important factor especially for indexing crawlers and web browsers
- too many scripts – it’s recommended to use asynchronous loading here, which can streamline the whole process
- using sites loaded with features and plugins – these force the server to process far more before it can send information to the browser.
Page speed becomes a more important factor every year, especially when it comes to user experience and conversion. If you want a fast website, it’s worth measuring its speed on a regular basis.