High load times are one of the biggest problems of websites today. Even so, website owners often underestimate their importance. Often, they put all their efforts into creating content and ignore website speed entirely.
Understanding Website Speed
Whatever the reason, this is a strategic mistake. If your website is slow, you are missing an opportunity, at best. At worst, you risk ruining your website’s performance with dire consequences.
Google has repeatedly advised website owners to focus on content. Content is the core of any website and it is what draws in visitors. It makes sense that having quality content is paramount for your website ranking well.
There is no doubt that content is crucial. But we will explain why website speed matters too.
To start with, we can mention that Google announced that website speed affects ranking. Research has confirmed this. Faster websites rank better.
This is due to Google’s ranking algorithm. Slow websites get penalized while faster ones get a better ranking. High load times make visitors leave quickly after opening a web page in search results. Google sees this as a lack of quality content and lowers the page’s ranking for similar searches.
Getting a low search engine ranking means a website will miss out on a lot of potential traffic, and this is not the only drawback of high load times.
We have mentioned that visitors leave slow websites straight away. Statistics gathered by hostingtribunal.com indicate many other negative effects of slow speeds. Fewer page views, reduced conversion rates, and decreased customer satisfaction all occur due to long load times.
Not convinced? Consider Amazon. The sales giant has estimated that they would lose 1% of their sales per 0.1 seconds of additional delay. Even Google would lose 20% of traffic if their load times increased by 0.5 seconds. If these websites are not immune to high load times, then nobody is.
As we have said, in the best-case scenario, having a slow website means you are losing potential traffic. Let your website get too slow and you risk not getting any traffic at all.
Luckily, there is no need to be daunted by all this. A simple Google search offers countless options for improving website speed. If you are interested in the benefits of low load times, check out the infographic below for some useful statistics and encouraging success stories.
Infographic URL
- Understanding Website Speed and Its Various Facets (Infographic) - November 21, 2018