We’re all used to the statistics that attention spans are shorter now, especially when it comes to waiting for websites to load. According to those statistics, half of internet users don’t wait 2 seconds for website content to load, meaning that 50% just instantly close the tab or click back (check your bounce rates in your analytics tools to see what your bounce rate is like, it could be linked to loading speed). So, why should you care?
- Website speed is the first impression you make – if your website is slow to load, and it’s the first time someone has visited your site online, then the impression you’ve given is slow and clunky. Does this reflect how your business works too? Probably not (well, I hope not), but remember that first impressions count – offline and online.
- Slow websites don’t encourage conversions – a conversion is when someone visits your website and then purchases an item, or gets in touch (basically, completes your call to action). If a website is slow, it’s going to really put off those people who are trying to do this on your website. To add a statistic into the mix, 40% of people will abandon your website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, that’s a lot of visitors.
- Website speed affects your Google rank. It’s a small percentage of your overall ranking, but every little counts right? What does matter here with Google is the slower your website loads (and if it’s over 2 seconds), then it will send less crawlers out to your website. Your latest blog posts and news will take much longer for Google to catalogue.
- User experience (UX) is so important these days online, but having a slow website kills this experience. You could have fancy bells and whistles, but if it takes a while to load then who cares?!
- Finally, we expect speed. 47% of people expect your site to load in less than 2 seconds, and 40% will abandon it entirely if it takes longer than 3 seconds. Did you also know, 85% of internet users expect a mobile site to load as fast, or faster than on their desktop!
These five points highlight the imporance of making sure you website loads quickly = it’s not just about your hosting speed but the size of your images and content too. If you load an image which is 1MB in size, compared to 97KB, then it’s going to take longer to load. If you’d like to get in touch with us about website optimisation or search engine optimisation, please send us an email.
One final thought for you. In a world of recommendations and word of mouth, if your website speed is killing your conversions online, are people less likely to recommend you offline? Probably.