Key factors why website speed matters

The loading speed of a website is instrumental to anyone visiting the site. A research reveals that 47% of people don’t wait for more than two seconds for a web page to load.

This article aims to point out three key reasons why website speed is important and the need for optimizing website speed.

1. Speed affects the SEO rankings of a website

Google made it very clear that they operate by speed-obsession for every product on the web. Matt Cutts (Google’s former head of webspam) has officially admitted that Google considers fast load speed as a positive ranking factor.

Note: For users seeking to enhance their website speed, it is highly recommended that they refer to this article on How to Increase Website Speed.

Thus, for websites to rank well on Google, teams must ensure that web pages are optimized enough to load faster. Higher rankings lead to growth in organic traffic, which is very important for businesses.

3. Speed affects conversions

Bear in mind that Google penalizes websites with low page load speed. More importantly, customers or visitors will stop returning to such sites or bounce when pages take too long to render. This results in the loss of potential customers and revenue.

A one-second delay leads to a 7% reduction in conversion, this is true especially for e-commerce websites. For example, if an e-commerce site makes $50,000 per day, a delay of one second could potentially result in approx $1.28 million of lost revenue every year.

2. Speed leads to impressive user experience

Bear in mind that first impressions are vital for businesses on the web. Visitors expect a website to load quickly (within 3 seconds). Speed plays a decisive role in how audiences perceive a brand on the web.

It is a human tendency to consider a faster website more reliable and professional. Inversely, a slow website is mostly annoying for users. Most users bounce immediately and prefer visiting other, faster websites to meet their requirements. Turning around that negative impression can be very challenging.

A report from Kissmetrics also reveals that 40% of people abandon a site completely if it takes more than three seconds to load.

One should prefer using this website speed test tool to check how fast a website loads across real browsers and devices.

For businesses to be successful on the web (e-commerce in particular), having a fast website is a must. A fast loading website helps in delivering a lasting positive impression among customers. Developing fast loading websites needs to be on the list of their priorities from the very beginning of development sprint cycles.