Speed matters. And that holds true in business or in real life. A lion in Africa has to outrun a gazelle to get its dinner. If the “King of the Jungle” fails to flex its running muscles well, it will end up sleeping hungry. And in the long run, if it continues to fail, the lion may die hungry. On the other end, a gazelle must outrun a lion. If it can’t, it becomes is butchered and becomes dinner. Certainly, there is merit in running. And yet, there is far more merit in running the fastest.
You may not like it. But speed is also a success metric in determining your website’s success. Indeed, the coronavirus has pushed businesses all over America into a corner. It’s highly likely you’ve got your address on the web too. However, here’s a word of warning for you. The more your website takes time to load, the more you’re losing business. In effect, websites that load longest will suffer the fate of the dinosaur, becoming irrelevant and forgotten.
How a Slow Website Is Losing You Money
You may have the best website. With all the elements to make your landing page dazzle, you’re confident you can cash in. But as much as you have spent a considerable amount of time to make your user experience the best, your efforts could go to waste.
The attention span of users online is short. Quite frankly, they don’t like to wait. If your website takes some time to load, all the goodies you’ve prepped inside would not be seen.
Google, the company that reinvented online search, recommends that the best page loads are at 3 seconds. Beyond that and your business could be hurting in the page rankings. Your website is bound to be unseen.
Of course, there is a reason for all the need for speed. A case study from the Financial Times has proven that. A first-second delay meant 4.9% of articles on a web page are not read. A three-second delay meant 7.9% of articles are dropped.
Another research revealed as much as 40% of users will drop your site when loading takes more than 3 seconds. Thus, if 20,000 users visit every month, a second delay could mean 8,000 users may be lost.
Now slow loading also affects e-commerce businesses too. The abandonment rate could go as high as 80%. It gets even worse. Once a user finds a website unsatisfactory, he no longer goes back to the site.
Each second delay could mean your website conversions go down by 7%. Thus, a site that makes $100,000 month after month, could get a bump of $7,000 for each one-second site loading improvement.
Now, think about how much damage a slow-loading website does to your brand. Needless to say, it speaks volumes.
Remedying the Situation
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to slow websites. As such, your website should undergo an SEO audit. As technical as it is, a reliable SEO team should be able to remedy it. Their expertise should salvage the situation and put your website on the map.
If you want to know how fast your website loads, you should try online tools that show how fast your website loads. Now, don’t cry if you find out your number is far more than 3 seconds. 7-second loading speed is still largely manageable.
Remember that your web host plays a huge role in your loading speed. Many times, this can be overlooked. If your traffic is really high, you may have to ask for a bigger bandwidth.
Another important factor that would affect your site speed is your content. Think of your website as a table. Each graphic, file, and streaming video will add weight to that table. In the end, you will end up with a very heavy table if you don’t do something about the load.
So the rational answer? Check all the things that you’ve placed on your website. Compress them to smaller files to make it all lighter.
Another is your images. You need to optimize them to lighten things up. But that’s just a start. Your SEO team should help you do the due diligence. At least for now, you know.
No matter how beautiful your website is if people don’t get to visit it’s useless. Taking time to improve your website loading speed should get things in order. And in the process, it will give you what your heart longs for.
