A customer or visitor expects the website to load quickly when they access it for the first time (within 3 seconds). Remember, those initial impressions are crucial for an online business. On the website, the audience’s perception of a brand is heavily influenced by speed.
Here are the topics we will cover in this article:
- How a Slow Website Will Make You Lose Customers
- Slow Websites can cause fewer sales
- Importance of improving website speed
- Conversion
- Visibility
- Usability
- Tips to improve your website
- Utilize a content delivery network (CDN)
- Switch to a better host for your website
- Optimize the size of the photographs on your website
- Reduce the number of plugins
- Reduce the number of files including JavaScript and CSS
- How does High-speed cause High ranking?
- Conclusion
It’s natural for people to value speed and professionalism more when evaluating websites. On the other hand, users find a slow website to be very frustrating. Most people leave the site right away and prefer to use other, quicker websites to fulfill their needs. However, improving your site’s speed has some additional, more focused advantages.
How a Slow Website Will Make You Lose Customers
Consumers are getting pickier and pickier about page load times and will leave your site and locate another online merchant if it doesn’t load quickly enough for them. This makes site load times more crucial than ever. The effects are extensive; in addition to affecting online consumers, they may also damage your brand.
Slow Websites Can Cause Fewer Sales
Research shows that a consumer’s loyalty to an eCommerce site, particularly for big spenders, is strongly influenced by the speed of page loading. The impact of a negative online experience will extend beyond the web and can result in lost retail sales, as shown by the fact that 79% of online customers who have an unsatisfactory visit are less likely to buy from the same site again and 27% are less likely to buy from the same site’s physical store.
Importance of Improving Website Speed
A web performance metric called page load time measures how long it takes for a page to appear on the user’s screen.
Let’s examine how improving website speed affects the crucial elements of a successful website
Conversion
Website speed has become extremely important to online buyers in the age of immediate gratification. Faster websites and pages have been associated with lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.
Google claims that an increase in website performance of just one second can boost mobile user conversions by as much as 27%. Furthermore, site speed has a significant impact on your potential revenue, with 70% of consumers making purchases on mobile devices.
Visibility
How quickly consumers may find your website is also influenced by its load speed. One of the elements that Google considers when ranking websites is website speed. A poorly performing website provides a bad user experience and receives less promotion in search results. Since December 2017, Google has begun prioritizing websites based on their mobile versions as well, even for desktop searches. This choice aims to shield consumers from websites with poor performance and inconsistent device responsiveness.
Usability
Customer loyalty is directly impacted by website usability factors like page speed, load time, and responsiveness to user demands. The more effective your website is, the happier your users will be. A successful user experience can help you develop a significant consumer base and a powerful brand.
Tips To Improve Your Website
You can begin improving your website after you have tested its speed. There are many various techniques to speed up your website, and we’ve compiled a list of the best ones.
Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network is a collection of web servers dispersed across several locations, each of which offers web content to users according to their location. The same hardware receives all user requests when a website is hosted on a single server. Because of this, processing, each request takes longer. Additionally, the load time lengthens the farther away customers are from the server. User requests are routed to the closest server using a CDN. As a result, a website loads quicker and users receive content more quickly. This is a costly but very efficient method of reducing load time.
Switch To a Better Host For Your Website.
Three different kinds of hosting could be available:
· Public hosting
· Hosting for virtual private servers
· Committed server
Sharing hosting is the sort of hosting that is most frequently utilized globally. That is the quickest and least expensive method for getting your website up. Selecting a quick web host is crucial for better optimization. You share the server’s RAM, CPU, and disk space with other websites that are hosted using shared hosting. This is the main cause of shared hosting’s slower speed compared to VPS or dedicated servers.
Dedicated servers and virtual private servers are both substantially faster. VPS distributes content via several servers. When you use a VPS, you share the server with other users while also having access to a separate section of the virtual server where your configurations are independent of those of other users. The best option for you will be a VPS if your website receives ordinary traffic or if your eCommerce site has occasional traffic spikes.
The most expensive hosting option is a dedicated server, which can be your physical server. In this scenario, server rent is paid, and system administration is contracted for.
Optimize The Size of The Photographs on Your Website.
Everyone enjoys captivating images. Images play a crucial role in the case of successful e-commerce. Engagement is increased when your product pages have lots of pictures and other visuals. The drawback of picture usage is that most of the time, the files are enormous, which causes a website to load slowly.
Reduce The Number of Plugins
Plugins are a standard part of every website. They include certain elements that were suggested by outside sources. Unfortunately, the need for resources to run them increases as more plugins are added. As a result, the website operates more slowly and security problems may arise. The number of plugins increases over time, albeit some of them can become obsolete. We advise going through each plugin you’ve installed and removing any that aren’t necessary.
Reduce The Number of Files Including JavaScript and CSS.
When visitors to your website seek to access specific files, a lot of JavaScript and CSS files on your website result in a lot of HTTP requests. These queries are handled separately by each visitor’s browser, which slows down website operation. Your website will surely load faster if you limit the number of JavaScript and CSS files. Try to combine all of the CSS files and JavaScript into one. As a result, fewer HTTP requests will be made overall.
How Does High-Speed Cause High Ranking?
· High speed gives a positive user experience.
· A website’s speed has a big impact on its SEO rankings.
· Speed increases conversions.
Conclusion
An average user usually expects websites to load in under 3 seconds. If this expectation barrier isn’t met, you lose a lot of website visitors and, ultimately, money.
So, we advise using the following straightforward yet efficient website performance improvement strategy:
· Conversion, visibility, and usability are three important aspects to consider when assessing the success of a website.
· Check the speed of your present website, then give priority to the pages and features that require the greatest work in light of these three considerations.
· Focus on the pages that have the biggest impact on conversion success when you begin your optimization with the elements that slow things down the most.
