Each day has 86,400 seconds, and the chances are we never make the best use of all these seconds we get each day. When we think about it, a second might not even seem like it would matter. However, online, every second counts, and in this day and age no one has the time to wait for a website to load!
More people in the UK now view websites using their mobile phone than on traditional desk top computers or laptops. The average the loading time for a website, when being visited on a mobile using a standard 3G connection, is around 19 seconds1. 19 seconds doesn't sound like a long time, but 53% of visits will be abandoned if a mobile site takes over than three seconds to load 2.
Having a quick loading website is more important then ever, Sites that load in 5 seconds vs 19 seconds observed:
As well as the reasons above why the speed at which your website loads is so critical to your online success, there are a further two which could have the most significant impact.
Google has indicated beyond a shadow of a doubt that website speed, is one of the essential signals used by its algorithm to rank web pages. In fact, it will become a critical element of the new mobile-first indexing being rolled out by Google. You could be implementing all your SEO strategies correctly, but without optimising your website first, it's like entering a Formula1 car into the Monaco Grand Prix with bald tires. You're never going to compete with your rivals.
Getting users to convert is a hard. There are often numerous steps they have to take (e-commerce checkouts usually have 3 or 4 pages) and then factor in the loading time for each of those pages, and you could be losing lots of potential sales/customers. A one-second delay in your pages loading time could result in a 7% reduction in conversions. This means if your online sales are around £250 a day, that's nearly £6,500 a year in sales you are losing.
First of all, check your score at https://testmysite.withgoogle.com . If you don't score at least a "Good", then you can either try some of these simple tips below:
Alternatively, let us help you. We recently improved a clients' website loading performance by 77%. Get in touch now and let our expertees help you. Call 0333 987 4343 today or complete the form below.
1 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016
2 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymised Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.7K, Global, March 2016
3 DoubleClick for Publishers, Google Active View ad viewability for 10.7K mWeb homepage domains with >70% measurable ad viewability, Global, February 2016
4 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymised Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.5K, Global, March 2016
5 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymised Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=2.8K, Global, March 2016