Why Is Your Website's Load Time Important?

Do you know the speed of your website? Many times, we focus on digital marketing, search engine optimization, and content marketing. Although, they are all very important, the speed of your website is also important, but many times ignored.

A very slow website will deliver a poor user experience, especially for first time visitors. You may have an innovated website with great functionality, but if your website is slow to load potential customers maybe be abandoning your website before finding anything. The content of your website will not matter if visitors must wait to access the content, especially when they can switch to your competitor's website.

How fast should your website load? According to Kissmetrics, 47% of visitors expect your website to load in less than 2 seconds, and 40% of visitors will abandon your website if the loading process takes more than 3 seconds. The loading expectations may seem unreasonable. However, keep in mind that Google also considers load time as a factor while ranking websites. Google is serious about loading time, and websites that deliver poor user experience are less highly ranked by Google.

Fortunately, the speed of your website can be easily improved to prevent hesitation among potential customers. The first thing you should do is find out how fast your website is loading from different locations and multiple devices. There are many website speed test tools to help you find the speed of your website. These tools will help you pinpoint precise numbers on load times.

You should also consider a website analytics package. For example, Google Analytics is completely free and is an effective tool for obtaining more information about your visitors, information you may not be aware of.

It's quite possible that your website is slow because of your hosting plan. You should check with your host for the best hardware and bandwidth available. You may need to upgrade your hosting plan.

Large images are probably the number one cause of slow websites. The bigger your image, the longer it will take your website to load, especially over slower connections. To avoid this, make sure that every image on your website is optimized for the web. There are many online tools to help you compress large images.

Visitor’s willingness to wait is only becoming lesser and lesser. Knowing the speed of your website is important. Milliseconds will make a difference when it comes to optimizing your website and retaining potential customers.

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