Why You Should Care About Your Website Page Speed

What is an Ideal Page Speed?

When it comes to page speed, even a fraction of a second can influence user experience to a great extent According to a study, more than half of all internet users expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. A website which is taking more than 2 seconds is considered slow.

If your website takes more than 2 seconds to fully load, it can be a serious concern. A slow loading website can cause significant loss – most website owners lose their loyal audience just because their website loading speed is not acceptable. A slow loading website, apart from being annoying, has numerous other negative effects that are worth considering.

In this post, we will take a look at why you should improve your website speed, but before that let’s know what is the ideal speed for a website.

What is an Ideal Page Speed?
You might have noticed, over the years, the focus has progressively shifted to mobile. Now mobile has turned into the mainstream. However, still many people find their desktop-computers useful for their daily online experiences.

Nevertheless, one thing is a fact, whether a user is using desktop or mobile device he expects a website to load fast. Website owners who consistently offer smooth and lightning fast user experience always have greater chance to enhance their customer engagement, increase conversion and sales and improve search engine ranking.

Everyone knows that good page speed is crucial, but the point is what is an ideal page speed. Well, every expert has its own opinion on website load speed.

According to Arvind Jain, a Google engineer, every millisecond matters when it comes to website loading speed. According to him, even a blink of an eye, beyond 400 milliseconds is considered too long for user’s to wait.

People are less likely to access a website that loads 250 milliseconds slower than its competitors. However, people expectations on website speed may vary depending on the type of content. Sometimes, people may wait for a video clip but not for a search result. Most SEO experts agree that website load page speed should not be more 3 seconds. In a broad sense, we can say you should try to keep your page speed below 3 seconds (2 seconds is even better). If it is above 3 you really need to diagnose the issues and fix them as soon as possible.

Tools to Check Your Website Speed

Page Speed Insight
Varvy
YSlow
Web page test
GTMetrix
Pingdom
Website Pulse

You may use any of the these free and premium tools to keep track on your website page speed. These tools may also give you suggestions on resolving the following issues:

– JavaScript and CSS rendering website loading
– Non-optimized images
– Unnecessary use of themes and plugins
– Externally – Embedded Media

After using any of above tool, If you get a suggestion to fix render-blocking CSS and JavaScript, there is a great post about eliminating render-blocking Javascript and CSS in above-the-fold can be helpful for you.

Let’s have a look at some factors why page speed is so important and why we shouldn’t ignore it.

It is an important Google’s Ranking Factor

As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, back in 2010, Google announced that website speed would be counted as a ranking factor. While some experts don’t consider it the strongest factor yet it can give you that little extra push to put your online presence ahead of your competition on search engine results.

Apart from considering page speed as a ranking factor, slow page speed can also affect how quickly Google can index your website. If Google is indexing fewer pages of your site, it can affect your website ranking.

It can Affect Your Conversion and Sales Rates

As people leave slow-loading sites, conversion and sales will be automatically lower if your website speed is exceptionally slow. According to report, every second delay in website loading can cause 7% fewer conversions and 16% decrease in overall customer satisfaction.

Let’s take a look at some examples how quickly loading page can bring better conversion and sales.

-When Amazon improved their page speed by 1 second, they noticed 2% increase in their conversions.

-Mozilla also improved their page speed by 2.2 seconds and guess what! now they relish 60 million more downloads per year.

-Shopzilla also noticed a huge benefit after decreasing their page loading time by 3 seconds. They started getting 25% percent more page views and between 7 – 12% increase in revenue as well. We guess, this evidence clearly discloses that if you want to get a higher conversion, you must take some steps to speed up your website.

It Helps in Reducing Bounce Rates

Bounce rate is referred to the percentage of users who visit a website and don’t come back. High bounce rate means that more visitors are abandoning your site while a low bounce rate means people are finding your site relevant.

It is clear that higher bounce rate can decrease your chances of leads, conversions, and sales. No matter if your website has the best content and best design in the world, but if it is loading very slow, people would not like to access your site. According to a stat, even a single second decrease in load time can cause 11% percent fewer page views.

Common Factors that Can Slow Down a Web Page

There are myriad of factors that can influence a web page speed. Below are some quick tips which you may find helpful to speed up your site speed

-Optimize your website’s images.-Minify Your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
-Choose a lightweight theme
-Try to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
-Optimize your site for mobile users
-Use browser caching
-Reduce time to the first byte
-Reduce server response time
-Choose the reliable hosting partner and pick the right hosting plan according to your business needs
-Try enabling compression

If you’re really serious about improving your online presence, page speed optimization must be your top priority. We hope this article gives you better ideas on why page speed is crucial to a user-experience, SEO, and conversion.