Do you know how fast your site is? Sure, you probably have an idea, but what about the actual data – do you know the exact time your pages take to load? If the answer is no, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Most website owners don’t know their load times. Furthermore, most people think their websites are faster than they really are. This is not an issue in and of itself.
The problem begins when visitors need to sit through the load times. When we look into actual numbers, it turns out sites with load times over 3 seconds get severe drawbacks. For big commerce websites, even a 0.1-second delay means less traffic.
Are you confused?
We’ll explain. You have probably heard countless times the importance of search engines in getting new visitors for websites. Website speed, these days factors into search engine optimization heavily.
Admittedly, speed is not as important as good content or authoritative backlinks, but it can still decide if your site appears at the top of search results. And you don’t want anything getting in the way that no.1 ranking.
What’s more, the visitors that find their way to your site don’t appreciate slow loading either. If your site’s load times exceed 3 seconds, 53% of visitors lose interest and leave. Even the ones that stay spend less time there and visit fewer pages.
This is especially bad if you want to monetize your site. Longer load times mean fewer conversions and worse customer experience.
In short, slower loading equals less money.
It’s not good news, but every website owner should be aware of it.
So what do you do?
Start by testing your site speed. A tool like GTMetrix gives suggestions on what sections of your site to improve. Having measured the load times, take a look at the image resource below on “the impacts of speed on website performance” and see how your site fares and what to expect.
This blog post was written by our partners at SEO Tribunal to accompany their new infographic. We hope you’ve found it interesting and informative. Sound off in the comment section!
