Technological advancements have redefined the ways businesses operate by creating unparalleled efficiencies, from trade all the way to customer service. Our current world is so accustomed to speedy solutions to problems that if needs aren’t met in a timely manner, people will quickly jump over to the next best solution. So what does that mean? If you are conducting business online, website speed is one of the most important elements in how successful you are at reaching users, providing a seamless user experience, converting your users to customers, keeping them engaged, and boosting your search rankings.
There’s a wide range of negative impacts attributed to slow page load speeds:
- higher abandonment rates
- lower likelihood of visitors exploring other sections of the website, visiting again or even sharing it with their friends and family
- decreased SEO rankings and SEM quality scores, hurting your CPC cost efficiency and auction win rate
- damaged user trust and sentiment (due to slow content and conversion funnel pages), meaning low conversion rates
- considerably higher cost amounts to convert fewer people, cutting into your profits
Many people would be surprised to learn that in an analysis of 900,000 mobile ad landing pages spanning 126 countries, Google found that 70% of the pages took nearly seven seconds to display! In some cases, it seems as though mobile gets put on the back burner, while in reality, mobile traffic has become increasingly important as it represents a larger and larger share of customer traffic and marketing investment. What’s even more startling is how this issue is persistent across so many mid and large-sized organizations that are equipped with dedicated SEO and development teams. The harsh reality is, if you want to stay competitive and still be in business, its imperative that you have lightning fast web pages across all of your digital presence, and that includes both Desktop and Mobile environments!
What Is Considered Fast?
Aiming to get your web page load times under 1 second is a noble but unrealistic goal. According to Google, if you can get them under 3 seconds you’re doing a great job. Under 7 is still competitive, as an average page takes 10 seconds to load. Anything over that and you’ll be heavily penalized, losing a large share of your potential customers and ultimately a lot of money! The fact of the matter is that a majority of websites fail to implement basic techniques to optimize load times.
How Does Your Website Stack Up?
Interested in learning more about where you stand in all of this? Explore the tools below to analyze your site’s speed. Each tool will provide you with insights focused on different areas, so it is worthwhile assessing your site with several of these. Also, ensure that you are testing on the server that is closest to your audience, as the results of that test will be the most relevant. Pay less attention to the scores themselves and instead focus on the page speed.
Fun Fact: If a site is making $100,000 per day, a 1-second page delay could potentially cost $2.5 million in lost sales every year!
Next week we’ll show you HOW to improve your tracking and dive a little deeper into just how much profit you could be losing through slow load times.
