Website Speed: 5 Tips on How to Improve Your Load Time [Infographic]

The speed of your website is important because it can affect your user experience, your bounce rate, your rankings, Your SEO strategy, and more.

If you run an eCommerce website, page speed is crucial for attracting new customers. These days a faster website it’s a necessity if you want to remain competitive in 2021.

Website Speed: How to Improve Your Load Time

Here are some stats and tips you need to know about website speed and how to improve your website.

Your website needs to load in less than two to three seconds (according to Google). If you have an eCommerce website, it should load for less than two seconds or you will lose potential customers.

1. Mobile vs. Desktop: Page Load Time Stats

A fast user experience is important for mobile device users. The time people spend on their mobile devices increases every year. So businesses must have fast load mobile pages.

In 2017, Google analyzed 800,000 landing pages across several countries and industry sectors. In conclusion, the majority of mobile sites were too slow. They found that the average time it took for a mobile landing page to load was 21 seconds. Also, 50% of visitors are leaving a page or a website that takes longer than three seconds to load.

2. Load Time and Customer Behavior

Most marketers and website owners know that page speed affects user experience. The load time of your website has a direct impact on consumer behavior. The longer it takes for your page to load, the higher your bounce rate will be.

If you run an online business, a slow load website means a higher bounce rate, loss of traffic, and loss in conversions.

People today want information fast and they don’t have the patience to wait. The average GenZ (Generation Z) attention span is eight seconds, and the average Millennial attention span is only a few seconds higher.

If your website is slow your customers will leave and they will search for a new faster load website. (Your competitor website).

3. Load Time and Revenue

Purchases aren’t the only form of conversions. Conversions can also happen in the form of email sign-ups, submitting a contact form, or a survey.

Your website load time has a huge effect on conversion rates and your total revenue.

A great website experience is what converts your customers. If your page load time is slow, they’ll bounce. These days, speed is money.

4. Load Time and SEO

If your website is slow on mobile, you will lose rankings. However, many people are still not making it a priority. Many SEO experts talk about how important load time is to rankings and traffic.

A study (Backlinko.com) found that there was no correlation between speed and first page Google rankings.

But Google says this affects the slowest websites. Website speed affects other ranking factors such as bounce rates and time on site. It’s estimated that the average page loading speed for the first page on Google is 1.65 seconds.

If you have an extremely slow webpage, you won’t get the first page of Google.

5. How to Test Your Website Speed – Tools

The first step to improve your page load speed and website performance is to test your page speed. There are a lot of tools available online that can help you to test your website speed.

PageSpeed Insights: This is a tool created by Google. It shows you the speed of your site and includes suggestions on how to improve it.

Test My Site: Another tool by Google, this tool allows you to test your mobile site speed.

GTMetrix: This is another site speed tool that allows you to test how fast your website will load.

Pingdom: Pingdom is a popular website monitoring service that has a free website testing tool.

WebPageTest: This tool allows you to run a free speed test from several locations around the world.

Last Tip

Start by testing your site speed. Then begin making improvements. Small improvements to site speed can improve your rankings, your SEO, your traffic, and even sales.