How Does Speed Affect Your Website?

 

The loading speed of your website is important for a number of reasons.

The most obvious, is that you want your website to load as fast as possible so your visitors don’t get impatient and leave before you’ve had a chance to show off who you are and what you can do for them.

It takes a lot of work to get them to click on your website in the first place; you don’t want to waste your efforts if they aren’t even going to wait around for your page to load.

The lesser known reason is that it is important for your SEO. Back in 2010, Google revealed that the speed of a page is a ranking factor and they have only increased the importance of it since.

Internet users love fast websites and that's why Google places a lot of weight on it for SEO.

Of course, users want webpages to load quickly for convenience. A fast loading website will be regarded as having good user experience and in turn will result in a higher rate of conversions for your business.

Yet, a slow loading website will be seen by the user as a poor user experience and is more likely to result in the user giving up and leaving the website which in turn could potentially lead to a loss in revenue. This is why Google may choose to penalise a slow loading website, which will have a negative impact on your rankings on both desktop and mobile devices.

How does website load speed impact user experience?

• Google added page speed to their algorithm because faster webpage loading times lead to happier users.
• Almost 50% of users expect pages to load within 2 seconds. Otherwise are likely to abandon the site.
• Studies have shown that just a 1 second delay in webpage loading can result in a 7% decline in conversions.
• According to reports, 75% of users won’t return to a webpage if it takes more than 4 seconds to load.
• Increasing your page load speed can result in a 25% increase in page views.
• A Google study showed slowing down the search results page by just 100 to 400 milliseconds has a measurable impact on the number of searches per user. Imagine what it could do to your website…

The user should come first when it comes to your website, however if that’s not a good enough reason to update your website in order to improve its loading speed then the fact that it will harm your SEO is something your business can’t afford to ignore.

Test your webpage loading speed now to see if you pass Google’s website speed test.