Web page load speed is an often overlooked, but very important factor when it comes to obtaining and retaining new clients. In this month’s Vortex Marketing Blog post, we will look at the benefits of page load speed, and why you shouldn’t ignore it!
User Experience
The most important benefit of having a speedy website is by far, user experience (UX). When users are looking for a specific service online, there are an endless number of options and they are all just one click away. Site visitors will look for any reason to leave your website and look for another, and the first thing they experience is load speed.
According to a study done by Aykira Internet Solutions, 47% of users expect your web page to load in under two seconds. 57% of website visitors will abandon your page if the load time is three seconds or more, and at peak traffic times, 75% of customers will leave your site for a competitor’s instead of waiting for long load times. Also, websites with a load time longer than three seconds experience a 50% higher bounce rate compared to sites that load in one second or less.
What does this mean? Ultimately, a slow loading website is more likely to lose sales and clients compared to a faster website. Not only does a faster website result in a lower bounce rate, it increases user retention and interaction, leading to more business for you!
Search Engine Ranking
The second most important benefit to fast load speed is organic search rankings. When Google is crawling your site, the time it takes to load is used as one of the hundreds of factors the algorithm takes into consideration when determining your search ranking. The faster your website loads, the higher it will rank in search results. On the flip side, a slow loading site will rank lower in search results compared to an identical site that loads faster.
Your user experience and retention also affects your search engine ranking.
If users frequently bounce off of your website, your search ranking will go down.
Does Your Website Load Slowly?
There are many factors which determine page load speed:
The number of images on a page, the size of those images in pixels and their ‘weight’ in Kbs/Mbs, caching, code, external fonts, maps, how many other sites are shared on the server, server resources and countless other factors.
At Vortex, all of the websites we create adhere to current best practices when it comes to page speed load times. In addition, we offer a private dedicated managed server for our clients, which feature Solid State Hard drives.
We recently unveiled our Page Speed Optimization Package: for a modest one-time payment, we will increase your load speed by at least 100%, while increasing your GTMetrix scores.
Before and After
To learn more, visit VortexBusinessSolutions.com/Page-Speed-Optimization/
And Test your Page Speed Now!
