When was the last time you checked the speed of your website?
Last week, last month…never?
The time it takes for your website to fully load when someone clicks on your URL, link, or another piece of content is incredibly essential.
Why?
People are impatient—extremely impatient! This means they won’t wait more than two seconds before leaving and going to a page that loads faster.
Consider the last time you visited a website that took a long time to load. How long did you stay on the page before clicking away to another site?
EXACTLY!
What Is The Importance Of Website Load Time?
As a Web Design and SEO Agency, we’ve discovered that a website’s load speed is critical because if it doesn’t load in two seconds or less, you’ll lose page views, customer happiness, conversions, your ability to engage with customers to generate larger sales, and so much more.
As a result, you must question yourself… Is that design nice, that new plugin cool, all those tags, or that cool new feature you found really worth it?
What Effect Does Website Speed Have On Conversions?
Conversions are directly affected by the speed at which your website loads. You will lose consumers (and potential customers) if it loads slowly, and the majority of them will never return. And those same customers who left because of a slow-loading website will tell others about it.
Did you know that 47% of website visitors anticipate a page to load in two seconds or less, with 40% abandoning a site that takes more than three seconds to open?
Yep! Those are pretty dismal figures, to say the least!
Consider the impact on your conversion rates.
Does The Speed Of Your Website Have An Impact On Your SEO?
YES! The load time of a website is one of Google’s most important ranking factors. Especially now that Google’s mobile-first indexing policy was established late last year.
So, what does this imply for you?
That is to say if your website takes a long time to load, Google, and most likely other search engines, will not rank it highly, and as a result, it will not be found by as many people as it would be if it had a higher rating.
Additionally, Google now uses your website’s mobile URL for ranking considerations, according to the new mobile-first indexing. So, if you don’t provide a pleasant user experience for your mobile users, your website is unlikely to be indexed and ranked well, if at all.
What Is A Reasonable Website Load Time?
The loading time of a good website or webpage should be less than two seconds. Yes, that appears to be a very short period, and it is unless you are browsing the internet, where everything happens at breakneck speed and most people demand instant answers.
In fact, when the load time of a web page climbs from one to 10 seconds, the possibility of a mobile visitor bouncing increases by 123 percent.
Yikes!
The bounce rate is lowered to below 32% if your webpage loads in less than three seconds.
So, how can you make your website load faster?
Continue reading…Three Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Speed
#1 Plugins for Caching
Cache plugins enable browser caching, which greatly reduces the time it takes for your website to load. Caching saves static files like HTML text, media files, photos, CSS, and other files like JavaScript and makes them quicker to retrieve, reducing the time it takes for your website to load.
The browser cache option can be enabled in a variety of ways depending on the website platform. WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, and WP Super Cache are three of the most popular plugins for this purpose if you’re using WordPress.
#2 Image Compression
Images consume a large amount of bandwidth. As a result, you should always optimize your photographs to ensure that they do not slow down the loading time of your website. With a plugin designed to reduce image sizes without compromising quality, optimizing your photographs is a breeze.
Each website platform will have its own method of picture optimization. If you utilize WordPress, though, WP Smush is a good option. If you use Drupal or Joomla, you might want to look into Kraken.
#3 Quality Hosting Service
Most consumers are unaware that the time it takes their hosting service to search up their DNS can have a significant impact on how quickly their website loads. Your DNS (domain name system) is a server that has a massive database of IP addresses and the hostnames that they correspond to. So, if your hosting service isn’t as quick as some of the other options, it could slow down your load times, affecting your rankings, conversions, and exposure.
How Do I Check The Load Time Of My Website?
You can use Google’s free tool to check the load time of your website. PageSpeed Insights is the tool, and all you have to do is enter your URL, and it will analyze your content and make recommendations for making your webpage quicker.
What Will Happen Next?
If you’d like additional information on how to improve the speed of your website, please get in touch with us right now.
There is a slew of other things you can do to improve your website’s load time. We have a team of specialists who know exactly how to do that and can assist you in taking your website to the next level.
We would like to be of assistance to you in any way we can!