It feels like being stuck in traffic. You can see your exit on the highway coming, but you are moving at a snail's pace. You have to get your life moving, and get your work done; instead, you're sitting to 80's rock on the radio and questioning everything.
This is what it feels like to sit on a slow loading website.
Your website's page speed is a core element of both your search engine rankings and your customer's satisfaction with your service. Let's look at 3 ways this really impacts your business:
A Faster Site Ranks Higher on Google
Google has been talking about page speed for a long time. This article from 2010 is an example. Again, this is 2010, 9 years before the writing of this blog post you are reading.
Which means, it has ALWAYS been a priority.
Google takes a look, and specifically prioritizes pages that load the most meaningful content in under 1.5 seconds. The faster you go, the higher you could rank.
Obviously, there is more to it than just having a fast site. But this is an easy way to get your site noticed by search engines.
Every Second Your Page Takes to Load Decreases Customer Satisfaction by 16%
You read that right: 16%! This goes down for every second that your site takes to load.
And the longer your site takes to load, and the longer your customer has to wait, the more that trust decreases.
Slow Sites Kill Trust
Did you know that your users want to see your website loaded in 2 seconds? This is not a long time, and offers both a challenge and an opportunity.
The opportunity is that most websites take between 3-5 seconds to load. As we saw above, ever second it takes to load means 16% of the audience is GONE. So, if you can beat that mark, then you win the race. You win the customer. You win the sale.
The challenge is getting things to load that fast. Take our SEO tool for a test drive; it includeds a page speed tool to see how you rank already!