Thinking about putting website speed on the back burner? Not a good idea.
Here are a few statistics for you to ponder on:
A one-second delay in webpage load time can lead to 11% fewer page views, 7% conversion loss, and an almost 17% decline in customer satisfaction. This is just one second – barely a sliver of time in a person’s day – yet, it can make all the difference in the world in terms of how you interact with your audience and make sales. In your quest for top-notch custom web design and development, partner with a company like Proweaver that addresses website speed needs in a comprehensive manner. Scoring well in the Google ranking scheme and keeping your bottom-line profits consistently high will depend on this decision.
Speed Optimization Impacts Conversions
Slow website speeds are going to annihilate conversions; there’s no other way around it. Did you know that almost half of the consumers visiting websites expect it to load in less than two seconds? And did you know that 40% of these consumers are likely to abandon a page if it takes more than three seconds to load? Think about it: you lose nearly half of your visitors if your site loads in three seconds or less. That alone is going to upend your goal of having a high conversion rate.
Now, let’s look at how slow website speeds affect the customers who do decide to give your site a shot. As it turns out, according to a survey, this is the only shot almost 80% of these consumers are going to give you because they won’t be paying another visit to a poorly-performing site.
Here are the rest of the statistics from the same survey that should factor in your decision to boost your website’s speed:
- More than 50% of online shoppers have factored page loading times when determining their loyalty to a site
- Almost 45% of online shoppers don’t hesitate to spread the word about their poor site experiences
- A one-second delay in page load times can lead to an almost 17% decline in customer satisfaction
With all that’s being said, there can be no arguing that improving website speed can lead to better results. Just take companies like Walmart, for example, and how they improved conversions and revenue by optimizing site speed.
Upon their initial analysis, the company discovered that visitors who ended up experiencing page load times that were twice as quick as the visitors who didn’t, ended up converting. This basically tells you that faster pages are likely to convert your site visitors into actual buyers or customers.
The statistics below give you more of an insight into how Walmart’s successful mission to optimize website speed affected their performance:
- Every second of site speed improvement led to a 2% conversion rate increase
- Incremental revenue shot up by 1% for every 100 ms boost
A recently conducted study on the relationship between conversion rates and page load times showed a 25% decline in conversions with just an extra second of page load time.
It’s never been clearer than it is now that putting effort into boosting site speed could greatly influence your conversation rates. And this could be the most telling statistics of all: Google, at one time, went through a 20% traffic drop because of pages that took an extra .5 seconds to load. This shows you how seemingly small delays can lead to a costly and substantial decline in revenue.
If some of the most reputable sites known to the modern world are doing their very best to optimize site speed, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t. If their users didn’t stick around for an extra second waiting for their site to load, there is a strong chance your users will give your slow-loading site the same treatment.
How Website Load Times Influence Visibility
Among the elements, Google considers when ranking websites is speed. In other words, users would have an easier time finding your site if it had fast page load times.
It’s especially important to prioritize page load times in an age where websites are constantly being viewed through mobile phones. Search engines now take into consideration page load times for the mobile versions of your website in the ranking process. This is only going to become more crucial in the coming years as the number of Smartphone website viewers increases. Search engines are naturally inclined to cater to the majority of their users and don’t want them to end up with pages that load poorly when viewed through their devices.
Proweaver considers mobile-adaptability an essential part of custom web design because of its role in the search engine ranking process.
Did you know that a few years back, only desktop user experience was factored in the rankings? Back then, even if your site loaded poorly in mobile phones, as long as it provided a great desktop experience, you’d still have a chance at a page one ranking. Gone are those days. Now more than ever, pages are ranked based on how good of an experience they provide mobile users. Boosting website ranking and visibility would now mean reducing page load times. Your website must provide optimal user experience, regardless of the interface.
The Reason Your Website Is Slow
So you just realized that, after conducting a speed test, your site is nowhere near as fast as you hoped it would be. In fact, it’s so slow that you’re worried about how it would impact your company’s visibility on Google’s search results. And you’re right to be worried because, as established in the above paragraphs, it’s going to significantly affect conversions, customer satisfaction, and so much more.
There could be several reasons why your page load times are lagging. These issues could stem from anything ranging from the number of redirects, to image time and server load time. This basically tells you there are several approaches involved in optimizing website speed. Begin by setting goals instead of immediately troubleshooting to boost website performance. How will you improve page load time? Well, first you have to have an idea of what’s considered the “ideal page load time.”
The Ideal Load Time
You’re a man on a mission to boost your website’s speed. However, before you begin, you need to set a goal on exactly how fast you want your pages to load. What is an acceptable page speed? According to major search engines, like Google, three seconds would be a decent enough time. However, reports find that most industries are failing to meet the standards set by the world’s most powerful search engine company. This gives you all the leeway to improve and get your site speed up to an acceptable level.
Proweaver recommends these eight ways to boost site speed in 2019:
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Minimizing your Http requests
A good chunk of page load times is spent downloading the different elements of the page, like scripts, stylesheets, and images. Because an Http request is made for these different parts, having several page components can make a page render longer. Take the necessary steps to minimize Http requests by finding out how many your website is currently making. Once you’ve figured this out, you can weed out the unnecessary requests to help speed up your site.
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Minification and combination of files
How do you reduce the number of requests made by your website? For this matter, you need to put your focus on CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. Your site’s appearance is basically determined by these files, which is why they are extremely important. These files also increase the number of site requests every time there is a visitor. Through the minification and combination of files, you’re not only able to significantly scale down the sizes of these files but also reduce the number of files altogether.
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Asynchronous loading for JavaScript and CSS files
Once you’ve successfully done step two, you can optimize how JavaScript and CSS files load on pages. Asynchronous loading is one of two different ways these scripts can be loaded. The other, which is synchronous, means files are loaded one at a time. Opting for asynchronous loading, which loads some scripts simultaneously, speeds up page load times because a browser, which loads pages from top to bottom, won’t wait until a particular file finishes downloading before it loads a CSS or JavaScript file. The browser will simply load all the other elements of the page at the same time.
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Deferring a JavaScript file from loading
This basically means you’re keeping a file from loading until all the other elements have finished. Because JavaScript files are so large, you’d want to defer them so that the smaller elements of your page can load without any disruptions. If you happen to be using sites like WordPress, the WR Rocket Plugin can be used to defer JavaScript loading. Our experts at Proweaver can teach you a thing or two about deferring these potentially disruptive files when loaded simultaneously with the rest of your page’s content.
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Minimizing the time to the first byte
Otherwise known as TTFB, time to the first byte, is basically the time frame in which a browser has to be on standby prior to getting the first byte of data from the server. Google standards for TTFB should be less than 200 ms. TTFB that is under this number means your website is in excellent shape. If not, then you should look at all the possible root causes for this issue, such as the network, traffic, web server configuration, and dynamic content creation. If you find out slow TTFB stems from server configuration and dynamic content creation, then there’s no need to worry too much as you have control over these factors.
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Reduction of server response time
The DNS, or domain name system, lookup time greatly determines how quickly your website loads. The DNS is basically the server that houses the database of IP addresses and their designated hostnames. Once the URL is typed into the browser, the domain name system is responsible for its IP address translation, which determines its location on the web. If you’re working with a slow DNS provider, then it’s going to increase the time for browsers to find your website. Speed up the process by switching to a faster and more reliable provider.
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Selecting the ideal hosting options
It isn’t wise to choose the cheapest possible option for hosting. While you may consider it enough in the beginning, it’s no longer going to cut it once your site starts gaining additional traffic. If you want a host that you can trust, going cheap won’t help you with that cause. There’s a variety of hosting options that could work for you: dedicated server, VPS hosting, and shared hosting. Discover which of these options can best cater to your needs and goals.
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Running a compression audit is necessary
In your efforts to optimize website speed, scaling file sizes to their absolute smallest, without compromising quality, is going to work so much in your favor. Smaller files will load quicker and decrease the overall load times of your site’s pages. Put effort into compressing high-resolution images and other large content that would be very slow to download. Run a compression audit to see how you can potentially improve a certain page through compression.
Website speed should always be a priority in the custom web design process. Your site could be the most aesthetically pleasing there is, but it won’t really matter because most of your potential audiences won’t actually be able to see it; in fact, half of them will be entering another URL by the five-second mark of waiting for your website to load.
We realize that our list is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways to optimize website speed this 2019. Do you have any other tips to share our audiences? Please feel free to do so in the comment section.