If there’s one thing that’s true for most people these days, it is that nobody seems to have time to waste on waiting. Whether it’s waiting for a weekly TV episode to come out, waiting in a supermarket queue or waiting for a slow website to load.
Think back for a moment, to a time when you’ve been forced to wait for a slow website to load. In a digital world of instant gratification, it’s remarkable to see just how quickly people lose attention. Sadly, the same is true with your business website too. Especially with website visitors who don’t already know you (and these are the ones which you’re paying for).
When thinking about slow loading websites, it’s natural to think about ones which you seem to be waiting an eternity for, however, research shows that even milliseconds can count when it comes to affecting how many goals (enquiries or phone calls) you receive.
Your website’s ‘conversion rate’ is a way of measuring the percentage of your website visitors that go on to complete a given action.
In this example by Cloudflare (above), you can see just how quickly the conversion rate drops off with each second longer it takes for the page to load. It shows a 68.4% decrease just from page speed alone.
It’s not just your customers that like fast websites
And as if losing potential sales enquiries isn’t bad enough, ‘page speed’ can also affect your ranking position on Google too. If you take a look at the bigger picture, Google’s ultimate aim is to ensure the best experience for people browsing the internet. The more happy users, the more people use their search engine and ads.
With such an increase in people using their phones to browse on the go, it can be frustrating to wait what feels like an eternity (yes, 5 seconds is an eternity these days), especially if your 3G connection isn’t that great.
So naturally, Google has openly admitted that faster websites have a better chance of appearing highly in the search results.
What can you do about it?
Ensuring that your website loads quickly can often be quite a technical task and will vary greatly for each website, however, the first step is easy and can be done in minutes. Check to see if your website currently has a loading speed issue. There are two places you can do this:
1) Google Pagespeed Insights
This is undoubtedly the first place to check as it’s created by Google themselves. They are the ones using this score to decide how high your website will appear in their results. It also gives you scores for both desktop and mobile versions as these can often have different problems.
To check your website go to PageSpeed Insights and simply paste in your website address to get a free overview of your current page speed score as well as a breakdown of what might need looking working on.
2) Get a free appraisal of your page speed and much more
We’ve decided to offer a FREE Website Health Check to ensure your website is in shape for summer. You can see which areas of your website might be holding you back by visiting www.gowebsites.co.uk/health-check or contact us for advice.