Have you ever had to wait for forever for a web page to load? And by forever, I’m implying 5 seconds or more. (In the real-world, however, 5 seconds isn’t so bad. In fact, 5 seconds is considered fast).
How much time does it take you to get from your house to your office? Or how long do you spend brushing your teeth? I know for certain that you do not complete either of those activities in 5 seconds.
You’d wonder, why bother if a website takes 5 seconds or more to load? Or why we get fustrated over sites like these? (Admit it, you actually do not like waiting and staring at your computer or mobile phone screen while a web page loads super slowly).
The Internet and Instant Gratification
It is basically about the need for people to get instant satisfaction. We live in a fast paced world and our number one desire is to get things done how and when we want it. However, in several situations, getting that instant satisfaction no matter how hard we try, turns out to be an impossible task.In the online world, however, we have several options to choose from. The availability of super fast internet at home, at our work places and even on the go.
As we make use of several search engines, we expect to get answers as fast as pressing the “Enter” button. We desire to have the information in the blink of an eye.
Most times when we follow a link and it takes up a bit of time to load, we instantly hit the back button with so much impatience as if that will help in loading the site. We go back and try to access another website. We do this until we find one that loads instantly.
What A Slow Website Means For Your Business
Owning a slow website translates to you losing a sizeable amount of high quality traffic. This further means lost sales, lost leads and lost income for your business.
By saying high-quality traffic, I mean the people who intentionally searched for information that would have probably led them to your product or service. That is the reason the search engine brought up your website. That suggests your content is useful as regards what the user is searching for.
When people leave your site even before they get to see what you are offering, the fault is all yours. You have a truck load of competitors. There is absolutely no reason they should waste their time waiting for your site to load when there are better and faster sites to check out.
You can be getting all the traffic, but because of your slow website, their attention is stolen by your competitors faster websites. They get to sell their products and services and also build up on their mailing list while you watch from the sides lines trying to figure out why you are getting little to no traffic.
If your website had been optimized, your competitors would be looking for other ways to get an advantage over you. And then you will be able to concentrate on other aspects of your site to improve on ranking.
So, what to do? At this point, the thought of giving up shouldn’t cross your mind especially if your site’s already ranking on Google. A considerable amount of time has also been spent creating and setting up your website, making sure it looks good, developing amazing content you know people would love.
All you have to do now is work on optimizing your website’s speed and having it run as fast and as efficiently as possible. Tweaking a few things in your website at this stage is a must.
The Benefits of Having A Fast-Loading Website
If you haven’t already guessed, there are lots of benefits that come with having a speedy website. As we’ve shown in earlier examples, these benefits are not that far out of reach and will help you get closer to ranking on google.
Here are some of the top benefits:
1. You retain your website visitors
A fast loading website will help you retain your website visitors. They won’t feel the need to go back to go check out your competitors. Instead, they’ll stay on your website and get a pretty good idea of what you have to offer.
But here’s the honest truth – if you truly want your visitors to not hit that dreaded back button and keep on coming back for more – then you need to have outstanding content on your site. It doesn’t matter how fast your website is, if you’re content is not keeping your users engaged or keeping them attracted to keep reading more, then website speed is the least of your worries!
(Think of it this way. A website is one big puzzle, there are so many pieces to make your website the best it can be, Speed and Content just being 2 of many.)
The important thing you should note is that you’ve got to think about your site visitors. The reason they are on your site and If you provide them with what they want, then they’ll keep coming back for more. However, if you give them content that doesn’t provide any value, then your fast-loading website will just be that – a fast loading website.
2. Positive user experience
Your brand or business will be judged by your new site visitors by how fast your website loads. If you have a slow site, you are basically losing the one opportunity to gain their trust. Your website will come off as unprofessional; something that’s unworthy of their time, so they’ll leave and continue their search to find website that will value their precious time.
Fast websites; however has a greater chance of getting their audience’s trust. When a page loads quickly, it makes the user feel valued and they feel like you are not wasting their time. They believe that you’re going to make it worth their while to spend a little more time on your site.
You also add to the positive user experience if you’ve got great content on your site. People will be more willing to sign up to your mailing list, they will genuinely be happy to purchase your products or your services, and they won’t hesitate to recommend your website to their friends on social media!
This, in the long run, leads to more visitors to your site which further increases the chances of your website going ‘viral’ and get you plenty more new visitors in the process!
3. Better conversion rates
All webmasters ideally want to have a perfect conversion rate for their websites. In real life, this rarely happens. Depending on the industry and the offer, many online businesses are happy with a 10% (or thereabouts) conversion rate. In many cases, that’s even considered an above average number.
Having a speedy website makes people stay on your website and check out your products and your services. If you have a well-designed website and you follow the best practices for maximizing conversions, then chances are you’ll have good conversion rates, too.
However, if you don’t follow the best strategies and techniques for improving conversion rates, then your speedy website is not going to help improve your bottom line at all. So, make sure you’re up to date on what’s working in your industry so you can put your fast-loading site to good use!
4. Better rankings on Google and other search engines
Search engines work hard to make sure they provide the best experience possible to their users. This is the main reason they have algorithms and metrics to rank websites for various keywords. There are billions of websites on the Internet. Search engines have to figure out a unique way to make sure the top spots go to the best websites.
No one person knows exactly what all the ranking factors are (it will be very easy to cheat the system if everyone knows what the ranking factors are), but website/page speed is definitely one of those factors. The faster a web page loads, the higher the chances that it’s going to rank high on Google and other search engines.
This simply means that if you’ve got a fast-loading and high-quality website which offers valuable content to users, search engines will definitely love you. Your reward will be high rankings on their search pages.
This is the sole reason as to why optimizing your site for SEO (search engine optimization) is important. If you succeed, rest assured you’ll get highly-targeted, free traffic for as long as your site is on top of search pages!
Final Words
Utmost priority should be given to website speed optimization. Having your pages load faster on computer and mobile devices should be the goal of all webmasters.
A slow website is going to hurt your business in the long run. If you want your business to stand the test of time, then make sure you optimize your website for speed.