by Claude Mifsud, UX Developer & Technical Architect
Website loading time is a major contributing factor to page abandonment. The average user has little patience for a page that takes too long to load, and justifiably so. Now that Google is pushing so hard in this direction, it is time for us to take action.
Google aims that their websites load in under half a second, while two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. To put it in layman terms, half a second is close to a blink, while two seconds is shorter than one breath.
The standards many have been using for page load time come from a study conducted by Geoff Kenyon, an Online Marketing & SEO Expert, where he compares website speed against the rest of the web:
- if your site loads in 5 seconds, it is faster than approximately 25% of the web
- if your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is faster than approximately 50% of the web
- if your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is faster than approximately 75% of the web
- if your site loads in 0.8 seconds, it is faster than approximately 94% of the web
Go ahead, visit your website now and count how long it takes to load. Where does it stand using the above statistics?
Site speed affects your search ranking, a faster website would rank higher on search engines such as Google, and higher rankings lead to more traffic. Once a user visited your website, a faster web site means a better visitor experience, leading to higher conversions.
What slows down site speed?
- Slow hosting
- Lack of cache and compression
- Excessive number of scripts and fonts
- Repeated scripts or styling files
- Images – one of the elements with the highest volume
- Too many plugins
- Errors
You can still do business online while not optimizing your web site for speed, however why wouldn’t you? Making certain you have a fast loading, error-free web site can guarantee your guests have a trouble-free, straightforward experience with your business. Get in touch with us today to get those load speeds down and conversion rates up!
