It’s not always good to take things slow. Poor page load speeds, for instance, are detrimental to your website’s traffic.
Kissmetrics, an analytics and marketing resource, says that about half of users expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less. If it takes more than that, visitors will leave. Google tested this claim and came to a similar conclusion: a page that’s just half a second slower had 20% less traffic than its faster counterparts.
It’s a transaction killer, as well. About 79% of online shoppers who weren’t satisfied with a website’s speed say that they won’t return to make a purchase. Moreover, about 44% would tell a friend, possibly another potential customer, about their poor online shopping experience.
All of these statistics don’t bode well for your business if your website is slow. Fewer people would stay on or buy from your website, leading to lower conversions and therefore, lower revenue.
Poor page speed doesn’t just decrease the number of people who stay on your site, though; it also makes your website less visible to potential digital customers.
A Ranking Factor for Mobile SEO
Previously, the ranking effect of page speed was limited only to desktop searches. Google has since introduced an update that extends this to mobile devices.
Last January, Google announced the “Speed Update,” a new ranking algorithm that incorporates mobile page speed as a ranking factor for mobile searches. The update, which will go live in July 2018, gives websites more impetus to improve site speeds, as about 60% of searches come from mobile devices.
Page speed is not the end-all of the update, though. The tech giant assures businesses that it would affect only pages that give the slowest user experience. Moreover, a slow page can still rank higher if it has relevant content.
What Can Your Business Do about These Changes?
Although page speed is just one of many ranking factors, there’s no room for complacency. There are several ways you could improve your site speed.
- Compress codes – Business owners can use Gzip, an application for file compression, to reduce the size of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files larger than 150 bytes.
- Reduce codes – You can remove spaces, commas, unnecessary characters, unused codes, and code comments to optimize the code and increase page speed.
- Optimize images – Business owners can check if the images on their websites are optimized. This means that the images should be in the right size and the ideal format. For instance, PNGs are better for graphics with fewer than 16 colors, while JPEGs are great for photos.
Other methods of improving page speeds include reducing redirects, removing render-blocking JavaScript, and making the most of browser caching.
We know that these improvements may not be something that you feel comfortable doing yourself, so if you need help tweaking codes to make your site pages load faster, turn to us here at Sievers Creative. We have the proper tools and expertise to improve your page speeds. Through speed audits, we’ll check which web pages are slow and identify the factors that reduce their speeds. Then, we’ll carry out the changes needed to make your website load faster.
Speed up with Sievers Creative. Contact us today to schedule an appointment.
