How long do you think you’re willing to wait for a website to load? It’s much shorter than you think.
More than half of consumers will not wait more than three seconds for content to load, according to Google data from 2018.
Despite statistics showing the importance of site speed, the average webpage on a mobile device takes 15.3 seconds to load. Imagine if your Google search took 15 seconds instead of 1 second or less…it would feel like a lifetime, wouldn’t it?
So, why is site speed crucial?
1: Customer Conversion
If a consumer has a negative experience visiting a site on a mobile device, they are 62% less likely to buy from that company in the future. Just think about what that can do to a business, imagine how much of a market audience it can lose.
Site speed investment ensures that you have the largest number of visitors converted to paying customers and that they remain loyal to you and your product.
2: User Experience
Site speed should be your number one priority for creating a positive lasting impression that converts customers and creates brand promoters. Your website is the first impression that you make with a consumer. As a result, it’s important that this impression isn’t negatively impacted by slow site speed.
To create a pipeline of happy customers, you want to give them what they want, and you want to give it to them fast. Whether that’s information, a game, or a membership portal, the user should have the ability to access whatever it is they desire on as many devices as possible, and in most locations, quickly.
Once consumers are confused by slow site speed or poor user interface, you lose them, so keep your site fast, and your interface up to date.
3: Google Rank
Google announced in 2010 that they incorporate site speed into SEO rankings. While it is still isn’t as important as Authority or Relevance, keeping your website fast still plays a role in getting your website to the top of the search results.
“Google will reduce the amount of crawlers it sends to your site if your server is slower than two seconds,” according to a public statement from Google.
This means that Google is less likely to find your website’s latest updates or blog posts which can have a negative impact on your site’s overall search ranking.
How do you improve site speed?
Resovere takes site speed seriously (we produce some of the fastest sites in Tampa). Every site that we create prioritizes a blazing fast page speed for both desktop and mobile-optimized websites. Below are some of the easiest and most impactful methods we use to decrease load time.
1: Minify Files
Your site contains a number of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files that make your website what it is. These files are crucial, but they add to the number of requests that your site makes to a server whenever a user loads one of your pages.
As a result, it’s integral that you remove all of the unnecessary, extra whitespace from these files to ensure your files are as small as possible.
Remove unnecessary code, formatting, and white space throughout your files. We recommend using a dedicated build and deployment process for your code using a tool like Webpack to automatically get rid of all white space when you’re ready to go live.
2: Optimize Images
Images tend to play a major role when it comes to site speed. People tend to upload massive files to their website, and in return, it makes their site load very, incredibly slow.
Easy ways to ensure your images are optimized and loading quickly are to resize and /crop images to the exact size they show on your website. Run your images through online generators (we recommend Kraken.io) or software (Sketch and Photoshop) to save quality while minimizing the amount of space that image actually occupies.
Also, understand specific file types and when it is best to use them throughout your site: JPEG, SVG, PNG.
- JPEG
This is the best file format for images. They use irreversible compression (a.k.a. lossy compression), some data is lost when you save in this format. It’s best to use anywhere on your site that you’d need a crisp photo (i.e banner photos, logos, graphics) as well as pages that have several photos.
- SVG
They are an XML based vector format that can be compressed, searched, indexed, and scripted. They are best used for any animated or interactive graphics.
- PNG
They use lossless compression. This type of compression ensures you don’t lose any data, but it means that it will be larger than a jpg. They are best used anywhere that you need the photo or graphic to have a transparent background.
3: Combine and Defer JavaScript
Deferring JavaScript means prohibiting the JavaScript files to load until every other item on the page has loaded.
JavaScript files are huge, by deferring them you allow the other portions of your content to load without any delay.
Site speed matters and can cause an impact. That impact can be positive or negative depending on how you invest in your digital presence.