Why Your Website’s Speed Is So Vital
Three. Two. One. That’s how long you have to get in front of your users. Google has found that a majority of mobile users will abandon a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds.
Even a mere one-second delay can have a huge impact on your metrics, reducing page views by 11 percent, conversion rates by 7 percent, and customer satisfaction by 16 percent. The modern website visitor is an impatient beast indeed. And the bounce rate for websites that take 4 or more seconds to load? It can exceed 90 percent!
Think about it, if your website is slow, you won’t even get a chance to pitch many of your customers. They’ll ditch your site before it even loads. Even if they wait for the landing page to load, a slow, clunky user experience will chase many visitors away.
Your cleverly crafted slogans and sales pitches? That amazing blog post you wrote? Few will ever read it because your site is simply too slow.
That’s lost sales, lost signups, lost eyeballs. Offering a top-notch user experience is essential for boosting conversion rates, increasing on-page times, and more.
A Slow Site Can Kill SEO As Well
Outside of user experience, Google and other search engines could punish your search engine rankings if your website takes too long to load. This means less visibility and less organic traffic. Further, bots will crawl fewer pages on slower sites because they have limited resource budgets. This too will harm your SEO.
So far, Google has focused on punishing very slow websites. Still, with Google constantly updating their algorithms and working to make the Internet faster, don’t be surprised if exceptional speed becomes an even more important factor in the future.
Search engines want to provide users with the highest quality, most relevant search results, plain and simple. As a result, slow sites could be banished to the back pages of Google and other search engines.
Meanwhile, 75 percent of search users will never make it past the first page. The other 25 percent? Most won’t make it past the second or third page. Even if you offer great content, if your website is slow, you’ll struggle to reach the top few pages of search results.
One way to boost your website’s search engine rankings is to increase speeds. A slow website will saddle your SEO efforts even if you offer great content, an amazing user experience, and awesome products and services.
Make the Most of Your Site With Fast, Clean Code
The foundation of your website needs to be clean, professional code. Your HTML, CSS files, JavaScript, plugins, and everything else need to work together to provide blazing fast performance. You want to get in front of your customers right away, before they even have time to think about abandoning your website. This way, you’ve got a shot to make an impression.
You can find “bargain” website developers that will use cheap themes and slap on a bunch of plugins to build a website. The site might even look decent. And if you load great content into that website, you could add value to visitors. That is, if they ever give you a chance and don’t click away before your site loads.
But you’ll likely never get that chance. Slow speeds = hampered SEO and high abandonment rates. Your great content and your awesome products/services will waste away.
You might try boosting your results with paid search and social media campaigns. That’d be a great idea, except a majority of users will abandon your slow, clunky website anyway. You’ll be paying for clicks but not producing results.
A blazing fast website is the foundation for an excellent user experience. Of course, speed isn’t the only factor…
An Excellent User Experience is the Key to Great Results
So far we’ve focused on website speeds. While blazing website speeds are essential, your website has to be a whole lot more than fast. Users will form opinions of your website in just 5 milliseconds (.05 seconds). This means first impressions are vital. Your design, images, copy, and everything else need to be as close to perfection as possible.
Even if you make a great first impression, you need to keep users hooked. That means offering compelling content, great value, and an excellent user experience on both mobile and desktop devices. A top-notch website developer can help you accomplish all of the above and more.
Your website is your primary online presence. Many refer to it as your “home base”. Your site will be vital for presenting your brand, informing customers, and all the rest. A professionally developed website will make a great first impression with blazing speeds and a great user experience. This will lead to more clicks and higher conversions.
And it all starts with clean, professional code.