A fraction of a second can make a huge difference to your website. Sensational content and fast speeds define a great site, so if it takes a long time for your web page to become visible to a user, you need to do some tinkering. If your site is slow, it can severely dent your traffic and revenue. Here are three ways a slow website loading speed is bad for business.
1. Poor Google rank
Google’s mission is to make web browsing as fast and efficient as possible. That's why when ranking websites, Google takes loading speed into consideration. In fact, <a href="https://medium.freecodecamp.org/website-loading-speed-optimization-in-2018-bananas-e66cc85df8dd">47% of online users</a> expect pages to load in just two seconds. As such, sites with speeds of less than two seconds may lose traffic because Google may reduce the number of visitors it redirects to it. That can significantly harm your online business, so if you want to be up there in the top search results, improve your load time.
2. Low conversion rates
The first step to making conversions, whether it's subscriptions or sales, is to nurture your inbound traffic. But if your site has a slow load speed, you are driving your visitors away. Consider the fact that 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load up. In the digital age, no one is willing to wait longer than they need to, which could compromise conversions and lead to a high bounce rate that sends your potential customers to your competition.
3. Poor UX
Visitors will judge your business and the quality of your product by their experience on your website. If your site is slow to load or difficult to navigate, they will equate this user experience (UX) with you as a brand, which could cause your reputation to plummet. Not only that, a slow site speed can mean features on your pages loading at different rates, leading to frustration when users try to click a link only for the page to 'jump', causing them to be directed somewhere they didn't intend. Introduce an attractive web design built around the user experience and with a fast loading speed and you will create an impression of professionalism, efficiency and reliability.
Improve your load speed
You can test how fast your website loads using a free website speed tester . Some tips to improve your speed include compressing the size of images, videos and graphics, tidying up your web design, enabling browser caching, and reconsidering your hosting service.
If it's time to revamp your website so that it loads faster in 2018 and beyond, Canberra Web has an efficient team of web builders you can trust to build and maintain quality websites that never disappoint. We offer services like web hosting, digital marketing and web design Canberra wide, so get in touch today.