Advantages of Enhancing Website Speed

Usually, internet users are used to instant answers, instant solutions, instant product delivery, and anything instant really. Speed has become an important factor for most people. Google knows this also because they made “speed” a top ranking factor in 2010.

The PageRank algorithm made sure that crawlers evaluated websites if it were able to load swiftly. In fact, according a Google research, 53% of mobile users opt to leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Imagine, more than half of your web visitors would leave once they notice a turtle speed.

Without a doubt, there is a direct connection between website speed and visitor retention. If they would leave immediately, another crucial page metric would be affected. That would be the bounce rate. So, if you want boost customer satisfaction, address page speed first and everything else will follow.

From time to time, it is imperative to test page speed. If it isn’t yet, then you better check your website’s swiftness. From Google’s point of view, if a website takes forever to load, Google won’t able to crawl every web page on your site. Search engines only allocate a certain crawl budget. Certainly, Google won’t wait all day for your website to load. Don’t be surprise if your website will receive a failing score.

What are the advantages of improving page speed?

Of course, page speed doesn’t only affect one portion of your website. In fact, it affects a wide array of areas.

1. Enhance the user experience.

• It only takes a 1 second delay and the visitors’ satisfaction will go down by 16%. For a measly second, that’s a huge effect!
• Not only that, 79% of the users will not buy your products because they already notice the delay in speed.
• Today, users will surely leave a website if the page load time takes a long, long time. When you choose to address website speed, users can easily browse your website effortlessly. Whether it’s looking for products or reading your website’s content, speed is essential in making sure the users are happy.

2. Higher conversion rates.

• If you look at data from the UK, it tells you the same thing. 67% of shoppers from the UK will abandon their shopping carts. If there’s a substantial change in website speed, the conversion rate can go up anywhere between 10 – 20%. That’s just for one-second improvement. Just imagine what a 5-second improvement would do to your website!
• Google’s Marissa Mayer shared how half a second delay affected a website. She said that a mere 0.5 second delay can cause web traffic to go down by 20%!

3. Better rank in the search results.

• When Google implemented the PageRank algorithm update, speed became an important factor. Google will take into consideration a website’s page loading time and speed. Thus, if you want to have better rankings, focus on website speed.
• Moreover, Google crawlers can assess your website faster if your web pages load swiftly. This would mean that you have more web pages that would rank well on the search results.

Conclusion

As Marissa Mayer said in the Web 2.0 Conference, “Users really respond to speed.” The takeaway here can be summed up to one sentence: page speed matters. Most users do not like to wait. Personally, I don’t too! So, for the next post, I will discuss 8 Steps to Increase Website Speed.