When coming up with a site, the loading speed matters a lot. Naturally, your website needs to create a great first impression. Typically, when visitors click your site for the first time, they expect it to load fast. If it doesn’t, they become impatient and leave and they may never return.
Nobody loves slow pages most especially when there are thousands of pages they can get what they want. According to a survey by Kissmetrics, 47% of people expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less.
So why does site speed matter?
1. SEO ranking
Search engine optimization is a big deal to your website. You want it to appear among the top pages in search engines. Part of the algorithm used by Google is the site’s loading speed.
Every day, millions of websites come up that offer what you offer. In a bid to stay in the competition, one of the things to do is ensure that your site loads in less than two seconds. When competition is stiff, more factors are considered to differentiate each one of them.
Improving your site’s speed is a step towards optimizing it to reach search engine standards. People are busy, and they need to get information as quickly as they can of what they want. The less time a site takes to load improves the user experience.
2. First impressions matter
Even as you market your business in social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, you need your site ready for the clicks.
First impressions profoundly matter regarding how potential customers see the business. As a startup or existing business, you need to make a strong first impression. If your website loads fast, it is a first step to keeping your clients interested in your services.
People often make an immediate judgment even before the source for information. A site that loads slower will think you are not trustworthy or it is insecure.
Part of creating a brand is ensuring that even your site loads faster for people to understand what your business is all about.
3. The conversion rate matters
The idea behind hiring a site developer who understands how important it is to have a great website is the fact that you want it to bring in clients. People want quick answers to their question. As such, the longer your site takes, the lower the chances of getting people interested in your products or services.
Now, if your page reduces the number of people visiting your site, it ultimately slows down your sales. More people on your website increases your conversion rate as more people get exposed to what you offer. Out of those that visit, some are potential clients who are genuinely interested in your products.
Work on your website’s speed and see the conversion rate increase. Apart from the speed, creating a sales funnel also works excellent. You want to nurture your clients into buying your products not just diving in and letting them know what you sell.
Some people visit your site for basic information not to necessarily buy. However, a little nurturing could convince them to try out your products.
4. The user experience is important
As mentioned, what sets websites apart is the user experience. The first step is giving your visitors what they want and giving it fast.
The site load speed comes into play here; ensure your visitors have a smooth experience when visiting your site as this increases your chances of raising your sales revenue.
Slow site speed increases the bounce rate. The bounce rate is the rate is the percentage of people who leave your site without even looking at any of the pages. It is calculated based on how much time people spend on your site.
Just as frustrating as a high bounce rate can be is the same way getting a watchdog error for Windows 8.1 and 10 can be. Nobody wants to use their PC only to receive an error requiring them to restart their PC.
Use the shortest words possible to help people know what your company is all about. Get ways to keep them on your site for longer.
Finding ways to make your site load fast
There are numerous ways to ensuring your site loads more quickly and increase your visitors.
- Get tools to analyze how fast your site loads.
- Reducing images size
- Only use the necessary plugins that are updated
- Compress your content by removing unnecessary characters and spaces across your CSS and HTML code.
- Choose the best hosting service provider and package well
- Make sure you have enabled HTTP keep-alive response headers
Site loading speed is one among other things that help rank your website highly on search engines. Improving it could help your business convert more and achieve the projected income level. Work on the speed as well as the content that’s on the site, and you could as well be headed to getting a stream of clients.