October 2, 2020
Aside from developing relevant and engaging web copies and polishing your web design, you must also work on speeding up your website.
You may not notice it, but how fast—or how slow—your site loads significantly impacts the performance of your business. Even a one-second delay can greatly decrease your page views, bring down customer satisfaction, and result in a loss in conversions.
This makes it clear that having a fast site is essential not just for SEO purposes but also for your business’ growth.
You must start working on improving your site’s speed as soon as possible. However, in doing this, you first need to know the industry benchmark—the acceptable page speed as defined by search engines and SEO experts.
As for Google, three seconds is the ideal page load time. One of their studies showed that more than half of the visits were abandoned when the mobile page took more than 3 seconds to load.
What is interesting to note is that according to its recent benchmark report findings, most sites are nowhere near that figure. Out of the 900,000 mobile ad landing pages examined, 70% took nearly seven seconds for the visual content above the fold to display.
We live in an increasingly fast-paced world, and consumers want to get what they want as quickly as possible. Considering this, improving your website’s loading speed promptly will allow you to enjoy the following advantages:
Google, which is the largest search engine in the world, takes speed into account when ranking sites. In December 2017, it announced that it would roll out its mobile-first index. This means that the search engine now considers the mobile version of pages when ranking search results—even in searches made on desktops.
This feature is rolled out with mobile users in mind. Google wants to direct users to sites that can load or function well on their devices.
If you want to maintain or improve your visibility on search engine results pages or SERPs, you must work on reducing your site’s loading time right away.
According to figures gathered by Kissmetrics, 40% of users abandon a website that takes over three seconds to load. On top of that, a one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. Ultimately, 79% of shoppers said they are less likely to return or purchase from a site with poor performance.
Considering these findings, you might be losing half of your visitors and plenty of potential conversions by neglecting your website’s page load time.
Improve your site’s speed and you can successfully avoid losing prospects.
According to Google’s findings, there are no sites that had an average load time close to three seconds. In fact, it took an average of 22 seconds for a mobile landing page to fully load.
In general, this means that site owners still have a long way to go to get their sites up to par with Google’s standards. The upside is that this spells a huge opportunity for you. If you will be able to get your site speed to an acceptable level, you will immediately be ahead of the competition in terms of user experience.
Conclusion
On top of providing the best product or having the most attractive website, you must also work on reducing your site’s loading time. Always remember that consumers today want to get what they need as fast as possible. If you can provide them with a satisfying customer experience through a fast loading time, you will be able to reach your business’ fullest potential.
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