So you’ve created a website for your business. That’s a wise choice. There are many benefits to having a website—it brings in new customers, keeps the old ones updated, and represent you in the best light.
You could even say it’s difficult to run a business without it. In fact, 90% of people would look up your business online before engaging in any kind of transaction. It’s your choice if they see your website or if they go elsewhere.
How does speed fit in all this? Well, let’s just say slow websites do not leave the best impressions. In fact, you should keep your load times low and, in a moment, you’ll see why.
For starters, high load times mean fewer people will find your business. Google’s search system penalizes slow websites both in desktop and mobile searches. Not only that but Google’s crawlers — the programs that index pages — spend a limited amount of time on each website. So if your site is slow, some of your content will not even be displayed in search results.
High load times also drive away visitors who find your website. You probably have heard of bounce rates. They are based on the number of visitors who navigate away from your site quickly, right after opening a single page for a couple of seconds or so.
Load times influence this dramatically. If your page loads in 5 seconds, as opposed to 1 second, the likelihood of visitors bouncing is 92% higher. If it loads in 10 seconds, bounce rate probability increases by 123%. You can imagine how many potential customers leave from the start.
But what about the visitors who stay? Each second added to your load times decreases customer satisfaction by 16%. And they say a happy customer is a loyal customer. The data collected by the Hosting Tribunal proves this. 52% of internet users say website speed is important for their site loyalty. This means it’s important for brand loyalty.
But the influence of slow speed is even stronger than that. If you sell products, 64% of shoppers will avoid buying from your site again.
Stats show that businesses get about 7% fewer conversions per added second of delay. Practically nobody can avoid this. Even Amazon projected they would lose about 7% of their profits if the load time of their website went up by 1 second.
Local business owners might think this doesn‘t affect them. Admittedly, local businesses get much less traffic from organic searches. However, local searches convert more frequently.
How frequently? Local mobile searches can have an 80% conversion rate. That means 4 out of 5 visitors make a transaction.
But what happens if your site is too slow? Well, it means those 4 customers will do business with another business owner. Arguably, high load times can hurt a smaller business even more than a large one.
The final question is: how fast should a website be? The answer: as fast as possible. But if you’re looking for an exact number, try to keep your load times under 3 seconds for the best results. And if you’re interested in learning more about website speed, the infographic below has some info you might like.
How Speed Affects Your Website
Infographic URL: https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/how-speed-affects-website/