Do you also hate waiting? And not just in line at the supermarket or during a traffic jam, even online our patience appears to be limited. The average loading time of a website can make or break an online business. Many website visitors don’t want to wait a long time for a page to load and are looking for the highest level of convenience. Find out in this article why page speed is so important for your online business and which factors it might influence.

WHAT IS PAGE SPEED?

Before we move on to the different aspects on which page speed has an influence, let’s explain what page speed actually means. 

Page speed is a measurement of how fast the content on your page loads.

Page speed is often confused with site speed, which is actually the page speed for a sample of pageviews on a website. Page speed can be described as “page load time” or in other words the time it takes to fully display the content of a specific page. An alternative description is “time to first byte” or in other words how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the web server.

An ideal page speed averages 3 to 4 seconds. But of course, the lower the page speed, the better.

But what are the different aspects that page speed influences? Let’s dive right in!

SALES

Page speed has a direct impact on conversion rate. A study conducted by Amazon 10 years ago found that 100 milliseconds of delay in a website’s load time can affect conversion rates by 1%. More recently, Akamai (2017) has reported an effect on conversion rates of 7% per 100ms. It becomes clear that the importance of page speed has only increased over the years and therefore plays an important role in the success of any online business. 

USER EXPERIENCE

Because ease of use is now considered a new commodity, optimal ease of use is the new minimum. Today, time is the consumer’s most scarce commodity, making it hugely important as a business to help your customer save time. 

53 percent of website visitors go elsewhere if a site takes longer than three seconds to load. Users should be able to access your website and anything they want to buy within a few clicks. 

The less interactive a website is for users, the easier it is for them to click through to a competitor’s web shop. We can also demonstrate this with the following figures (Infographic Google, 2018): 

Here we clearly see that pages with a longer loading time will result in higher bounce rates which in turn will also result in a lower average time on the page.

SEO

Page speed plays an important role in your website’s SEO score. Never heard of SEO? Then take a look at one of our previous articles on this subject.

In recent years, Google has become much stricter when it comes to the technical requirements for websites. Google has indicated that site speed (and therefore page speed) is one of the characteristics used by its algorithm to rank pages. In other words, a shorter loading time will make your website appear higher in the organic search results (= SERPs). This means more clicks and therefore more organic visitors to your website.

Not only the time visitors need to open a website is important, but also the speed for search engine crawlers. If the speed of your website is too slow, it will also be more difficult for the Googlebot to reach your website content.

Top positions in Google are therefore always taken by websites with a short loading time. The slower the speed of your website, the smaller the chance of getting a top position or ranking. Research has also already shown that most people only click on the top 10 results for a search query or keyword.

Curious about the page speed of your website? Do the test yourself!

You can easily evaluate your page speed using the Google tool: Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This tool gives you a general average score (desktop & mobile) and some useful tips to optimize which you can then easily forward to your website developer. 

If you need any advice or help with optimizing and growing your online business, don’t hesitate to contact us!