Is your slow website slowing your company down?
Page loading speed is an issue that is on every web designer’s mind, and it’s something that really can affect your user’s experience and also, your conversions. With the standardization of high-speed internet across the US, a lot of designers have started to forget about the basics when it comes to optimizing their websites for fast loading times. Here are some ways a slow loading website can affect your traffic:
Quick Bounces
Every second counts when it comes to page loading times. A user with a very fast internet connection may become annoyed when your website doesn’t load instantly, and may just click away. There is a direct coorelation with page loading times, and increased percentage of bounce rate. A bounce is a user that left your page after only viewing the one page. A quick bounce is a user that left your page before it could even finish loading. Try to limit your quick bounces as much as possible by elminating slow page load times.
Low Conversions
We want the user of a website to get to the conversion oppertunity as quickly as possible. By eliminating some outside variables such as a slow loading website, we can eliminate one factor that may stop them from converting.
Search Engine Results
Google knows how fast your website is, how quickly it loads, and if there are “quick bounces”. Page loading speed is a small variable google uses to calculate page rank.
How To Know if Your Website is Slow
You may be thinking to yourseldf, how do I know if my site is loading slow? My internet is too fast! Well, there is a tool for that!
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Visit the PageSpeed Insights Tool by Google and enter your web URL to find out how quick your page loads and what may be slowing it down. Common errors that slow down sites:
- Non-optimized Large Images
- Tons of Javascript
- A lot of CSS
- Outbound calls
- Improper Coding / Validation
- Cache settings and server settings
Blog Post Written by Taylor Vowell
Taylor Vowell is a certified inbound marketing specialist with a background in graphic design and website development. www.tmrdirect.com