Websites are one way of representing yourself or your business to the world. Imagine if you are going in front of your customer –
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how they would feel if you are working slowly? Will you be able to finish your work on time? What reviews shall a business critic write about you and the swiftness of your service? The same applies to your website! Let us consider how your website’s speed is important
Website Ranking On Search Engines
One of the features of a website considered when they are ranked in search engines is the page speed: the faster the page loads, the more efficient the site is.
Why? It saves time! Globalization has increased the pace of life. Search engines, like Google, are always indexing sites with a faster page load speed at a higher rank than the slower ones.
Moreover, the Google page speed test provides significant insights regarding the page speed score and the reasons behind it.
Why should you care? Because search engines are naturally an efficient way to generate an audience for your website. Most of the users, who can be your potential customer, readers, etc. depending on the type of your website, still search their queries on search engines.
The higher your site is rated, the better chances you have been spotted by the customer. It is just like billboards- the ones on the front are more visible and likely to attract attention than the ones on the back.
Competitiveness in Search Engine Optimization
You are right! About ten years ago, SEO was not a huge problem. There were a few sites in each category on the internet that were popular. The competition was not an issue.
Fast forward to 2019 – the past decade has seen numerous quality websites springing up in every category. In the present era, your website can only survive the competition if it has a better search engine optimization score than its rivals.
In a competitive market, the quality of the product and platform determines who wins the most customers – a principle that can be applied to websites. Page speed improvement raises the SEO score of your website, making it rise above its competitors.
Google page speed test allows you to check for optimization methods that can improve your page speed.
Users Have Expectation :
Consider yourself in a situation where you need a product urgently. You have the choice of 2 stores, one of which shall cater your need instantly, while the other shall make you wait for an hour. Apart from this, all other features of both the stores are the same- which one shall you choose?
Similarly, users of your website have certain expectations regarding your website quality. They may not revisit a site that is too slow or keeps getting stuck. Moreover, they may shift to a substitute business that has a website with faster page speed. Without users and visitors, the site is effectively dead.
Part of the problem here is that most users have limited data capacity available for which they are paying. A website that takes too much data to load and operate can increase the opportunity cost of using the website.
Google page speed indicates various reasons for slower page speed that are related to data-heavy content being placed on the site.
For example, a page full of high-definition uncompressed images is likely to load a lot slower than a page with 2-3 vector images. This speed difference is due to the fact that in uncompressed HD images, much more data has to be transferred to the browser compared to 2-3 vector images – which affects page speed.
Consequently, a slower page speed may indicate the need for high data transfers to load the page – something most visitors are unwilling to pay for.
You don’t want to lose your visitors, do you? Start caring about the page speed!
You Should Care Because It Matters :
Websites, especially professional ones, can be expensive to set up and quite tiring to maintain. Despite taking all this burden, what benefit would there be if you lose visitors and ranking by lack of care for page speed?
Tools, like Google page speed test, provide you deep insight into the reasons your website is performing slower than it should.
You will be amazed to see that some of these reasons can be removed quite easily if you know they exist. For example, simple plugins, like Smush Pro Image Optimization or reSmush.it, can help make your site considerably faster by reducing the size of images.
Moreover, a caching plugin like W3 Super Cache can help reduce the data transfer requirements per session. Furthermore, lazy loading techniques can improve the initial load speed of your page, etc. However, all of this is possible if you CARE!
Indifference to page speed can result in something simple, yet powerful, ruining a website you have worked hard on. It’s better to care than to regret!
Saves Your Form Over-Doing It :
Sometimes, trying to do too much on one page becomes the reason for its performing slower. An example of this is single-page websites that try to display all the information, pictures, and references on one page.
Sure! This may work if lazy loading and caching are used. However, the problem can ultimately be avoided by trying not to over-do it.
Another example of this is using too many plugins or extensions on one page. They indeed provide added functionality; however, they also reduce the speed as more data has to be loaded. Speed tests, like Google page speed, can help identify the potential back-end causes of slower page speed,
Remember, less is more!
Summing Up
When considering the world of web, remember that it is not an isolated platform. Your website is being visited continuously, and opinions are generating regarding it.
As a representation of you and your business, the same idea is being applied to you too. Anything, including page speed that can ruin this image, must be corrected. This is only possible if you care. Do you? That’s the question.