In this day and age, time is precious and the last thing consumers want to spend time on is a slow website. Let’s face it, we don’t have to, we’re not going to. With several billion other options, there are other sites to go to get what we want. How does your site speed really affect your business? We have compiled a list of the top five reasons your site needs to be fast to succeed.
Lower Bounce Rates
The world is moving at a faster pace every single day and our technology is moving right along with it. With faster internet speeds and more online shopping than ever before thanks to personal computers, tablets and smart phones, people are more impatient than ever. They want their goods and services and they want them right now. Slow sites get overlooked, consumers may be interested initially, but slow loading pages will send them searching for a newer, quicker website. Having a faster site will keep a customer’s interest longer.
Consumer Loyalty
Customers tend to be more loyal to a website that works efficiently and loads quickly. If a consumer comes to your website and it doesn’t load within five seconds it is almost a surety that they will abandon it. Most of the time they will leave after 3 seconds. When a customer leaves a site because of a slow loading time, they will often tell their friends and family not to use the site. This means that your site speed is not only affecting your current customer base, but the future one as well. Negative reviews, even by word of mouth are never a good thing for your bottom line. Faster site speeds can secure repeat customers and entice new ones to try your product or services.
Google Rank
How fast your page loads can affect your ranking in the Google search engine results. When your page is slower, it will be ranked lower. Google conducted a study that changed the Google search results page from ten on each page, to thirty. What happened? The pages at the bottom had a twenty percent drop in traffic. The difference in the loading times? A half of a second. Half a second cut their traffic by almost a quarter. Can you imagine what that extra 5 seconds does to your ranking? While speed is by no means the only way to become ranked, it sure helps to have a faster site to increase your chances of a higher ranking.
Advertisements
Google will charge you more for PPC ads if your site is too slow. Every time a search is run, there is an auction to see which adverts are displayed along with the search results. In order to get a lower ranking website (a slower website) to turn up in these ads, then you have to increase your budget to even have a chance to pop up. A faster site is going to rank higher in the auction, and thus have to pay less for the premium ad spots.
Sales Conversions
Conversions rates tend to be much lower for slower websites. The main reason for this, is people are leaving. They will abandon their efforts to engage services or leave a full cart if it takes too long. Everyone wants their products or services to sell and having a faster website can accomplish that. Large companies have reported that shaving a few seconds off of their loading times proportionately increased their sales. However, every second of lag caused severe profit losses.
As you can see from the reasons above, web site speed, or lack thereof, can make or break your website. Faster speeds will increase your bottom line and that is what we all want, as consumers as well as business owners.