Your website speed is important… and we mean REALLY important! It is a website quality that’s often overlooked. Did you know that your page speed plays a massive role in your annual business revenue? Yes… Really! It literally PAYS to have a fast website! Think of your website speed as a first impression. If you have a fast loading website then you’ve made a great first impression! 

The average time someone spends waiting for a site to load is three seconds. Any website that takes longer than three seconds to load will lose many customers and tons of potential revenue. Even the most well known businesses out there will lose money if they have a slow loading website. Research shows that a website delay of 100 milliseconds results in a loss of thousands of dollars of income. 

The human brain has a very short attention span and extremely high expectations of website speed (which can be a very challenging combination). People expect a response from an online action within one second. A one-second delay in website speed can result in 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions. As mentioned before, this can cost thousands of dollars (or more) to businesses! The faster you can make your website, the more likely your visitors will stick around.

There are hundreds of reasons why a website might be slow. The best thing that you can do is to recognize why your website is slow and take the necessary steps to fix it. 

Your slow website might be the product of poor server performance, the location of the server, the amount of traffic on your site, large images in a complex file format, excess coding and unoptimized JavaScript, text graphics, too many file requests or plugins, unnecessary redirects, and an outdated content management system. There are many more reasons why your website could be loading slowly. Take some time to evaluate your site and determine what might be the issue. 

You must pinpoint your website speed issues and fix them as soon as possible. Your Google ranking depends on it! Google has started ranking websites based on the speed of its mobile and desktop websites! That means the speed of your website determines where your website ranks on a page in a Google search. The faster-loading websites will rank higher in Google search results. Google will also reduce the number of visitors on your site if your server is slower than three seconds. This is another important reason why you want your website to be quick! If it’s not fast, then it will be more difficult for customers to find your site. Obviously, the higher your website ranks on Google, the greater the opportunities for generating more traffic. 

A majority of web traffic today comes from mobile devices, which means your page speed needs to be on point! People consider a fast website to be reliable and professional. I mean… don’t you? A slow website makes people feel like the page is untrustworthy, insecure, and unsafe. You obviously don’t want your website giving off that impression. Studies show that once a customer experiences a slow-moving website, nearly 80% of people never return to the site. A slow website absolutely kills conversions! 

A good rule of thumb is to review your website often. Regardless of the problems you’re experiencing on your site, you always need to be looking for ways to improve it. A website scan will make sure that nothing is holding you back from making money or having a successful website. To make things easy on you, we’ve created a free website audit that will scan your website for responsiveness, on-page SEO, page speed, and credible links!