Load Speed: If your website takes too long to load, there’s a high chance of losing your target market. Apparently, nobody wants to waste their time on a slow website. Your goal is to improve user experience as you want to keep your audience. Here are a few reasons why loading speed is important:
- The first Impression is the Last Impression
Your audience can make a quick judgment about your website. If it loads fast, it is guaranteed to have a good impression. Fast-loading websites are considered professional and reliable. We can correlate website load speed to efficiency and trust. A slow website, on the contrary, will make us think it’s risky. In terms of customer experience, it’s difficult to get a second chance as a negative impression can be hardly reversed.
- User experience
The two primary factors involved in a great user experience are providing the audience with what they’re looking for and being able to deliver the answers quickly. Thus, website load speed should be a top priority for user experience. Given that your audience visits your website to look for something, give it to them as soon as possible because nothing is more annoying than a slow website!
- Visitors Need Speed
Audiences anticipate short loading time. Frankly, people tend to be impatient nowadays – they expect answers to appear instantly. Regardless of what devices they are currently using, they expect quick results. Facts from Kissmetrics.com, 47% of people expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds and 40% will leave if it takes longer than 3 seconds. Audiences can tolerate delays with established names like Facebook but other businesses don’t have that convenience. Therefore, it’s best to be as quick as possible right from the very beginning.
- Pathetic Load Speed Decreases Conversion Rates
Slow websites can badly affect your sales and marketing results. They can drive your customers away, decrease conversion rates, and damage your ranking in search engines. Nobody wants to wait around until your page loads if there are plenty of websites to choose from. Reduce your website loading speed and your views, conversions, and customers will begin to increase.
- Speed Affects Google Rank
Google always strives to make the whole web fast. Their mission is to assure that the internet is super-fast, useful, and easier to access. In 2010, it was reported that Google included website load speed as their basis for rankings. That means Google will unlikely pick your website up if it loads slower than 2 seconds.
- Long-term Effect of Slow-loading Website
Slow loading speed means a high drop-off in visitors. Almost 50% of your visitors have abandoned your site. And, this also has an effect in the long term. Slow loading speed also means slow progress. Potential customers will stop referring to your service as a result of poor performance. Mainstream websites will less likely to link back to your site’s content. This may even deter visitors from signing up for your services. Websites with slow loading speeds are commonly noted as lack of credibility – which adversely impacts your brand in the long run.
Again, speed matters. It’s important to know if your website loads fast on all devices and platforms especially if you want to cater global audience. For digital consumers, quality, easy access, and flexibility matter. So does speed. Don’t lose them for something as simple as loading speed.
