Most of us don’t like to wait: in lines at the grocery store, for our food to come at a restaurant, at the doctor’s office, to go online until after we stop driving — and we really don’t like to wait half a second longer for a website to load. If we do, we leave.
A recent Copyblogger article shared that when Google tested displaying 30 search results per page instead of 10, its traffic dropped by 20 percent because the page load took half a second longer to load. Amazon also experienced a drop in revenue and traffic when its site had a fraction of a second delay.
Google has shared that your site speed is one of the factors that determines your search ranking. Your site speed affects your page views, conversions, bounce rate, revenue and more.
So if you feel like your have a hip website with strong content, but aren’t converting your customers, check your speed. A tool we love is Google PageSpeed Insights. If you feel like your site could be faster, but don’t know what’s slowing it down, here’s what to consider:
- Choose a good server: Hosting with a professional configuration will usually give you a faster site. Paying a little extra for a host that you know you can rely on is worth it once your revenue grows as your site speeds up.
- Large images: The larger your images are, the longer it will take your page to load. Try to keep your bigger images to a minimum.
- Design theme: Some themes are quicker than others. Make sure your framework isn’t slowing you down.
- Too many ads: The more traffic you get, the more ads you want to showcase. But if too many ads are slowing down your site, you are losing money. Be wise about which ads you choose so you don’t overload your page.
If you need a faster website to convert more customers, contact Fahrenheit Marketing today.