Why Slow Website Loading Speed Could Cost Your Company

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Slow Website Loading Speed Could Cost Your Company

47% of visitors expect web load time to be less than two seconds with higher website loading speed and 40% will turn their back on pages that take more than 3 seconds to load, according to Kissmetrics.

In today’s digital era and fast pace, world people expect everything instantly like a web page to load instantly, and are disappointed when they don’t. They may even relate or see a slow website as a reflection of how one’s business is doing.

Slow website loading speed could lead to an increase in bounce rate, drop-in conversion rate and revenue, negative publicity, drop in page traffic, and most importantly customer experience.

Not just this, slow website speed also impacts the search engine rankings which in turn drives traffic away to other sites having comparatively greater website speed as Google includes website speed and web load times as a factor in its search ranking formula.

Website Speed vs Traffic

Website loading speed plays a crucial role in user experience and traffic generation for which a good business website hosting plan needs to be in place including for WordPress.

Increasing the website speed by a second or two can slightly enhance the conversion rate but a delay by a second or two can almost double the number of visitors’ bounce rate, which in turn negatively impacts the conversion rate.

How to Check Website Loading Speed is Good or Not?

There are various tools to check website speed that can help measure page speed and performance like Google Page Speed Insights, GTmetrix, Pingdom, etc. These tools run on certain predefined algorithms and provide detailed reports of performance and most likely results for poor performance.

The best part is they also offer suggestions for achieving faster website loading speed, which could be a good initial starting point.

Below are the key factors that get directly impacted by slower website speed and could cost a huge amount to companies:

1. Bounce Rate

conversionxl-bounce-rate-benchmark
Source: ConversionXL Bounce Rate Benchmark

A slow website loading speed can lead to higher bounce rates and loose potential customers.

Due to higher loading time if a user moves out to another site, it is termed a bounce. The solution to reducing bounce rate is to ensure website speed is decent.

2. Impact to Revenue

Slow website loading speed not only impacts the revenue as potential customers look for faster alternatives, but might also increase customer support costs.

Multiple studies have shown a correlation between higher customer support costs because customers get frustrated trying to access information on slow sites and end up contacting customer support for help.

3. Affects Publicity

It is imminent that website loading speed should be fast, but most of the time one focuses on search engine rankings and traffic as the content or product list of the site grows, and forget to take a step back and think about the impact of slow website speed on publicity.

People stop visiting sites and sharing content if they get a faster alternative, and this will impact online presence. It could hurt rankings and also results in a bad user experience.

4. Loyalty

The faster the website loading speed, the more likely visitors are to stick around. Consumers spend more time online; therefore, they value websites that work efficiently and quickly.

This makes website speed a key factor for improving customer loyalty and company reputation online.

5. Website Speed Impact on Traffic

Users determine the professionalism and reliability of a website by its speed. If the website loading speed is slow or isn’t easy to navigate, one can expect users to take their business elsewhere.

Therefore, slow website speed will hugely impact traffic and its future growth prospects. Making use of NVMe SSD drive helps drastically page speed.

6. Impact on checkout rate

Online shoppers consider a lot of things before deciding whether to buy or not a product or a service.

They read product reviews, and check product descriptions to know more about the product, is this product available for a better price elsewhere, etc.

It’s easy for them to get distracted by slow website speed and complete the transaction elsewhere.

Various studies available online have shown slow website speed can reduce eCommerce conversion rate by 20 percent.

How to Enhance Website Speed and Conversions?

We have looked at various impacts a slow website speed can cause to the business, let’s now look at how to enhance the website loading speed and overcome the above impacts.

Tips to enhance website loading speed: Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), Simplify Design, Test your Website loading Speed

1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

content delivery network

One may be able to cut bandwidth by as much as 60% with one change, using a CDN. Hosting media files on a CDN can help unlock hidden performance possibilities.

Here’s how a CDN works, media files are hosted across a network of servers in locations all over the world, site content is served to the visitors by the server closest to them geographically, and bandwidth is spread across an entire network, reducing the load on individual servers, eventually improving website speed.

2. Simplify Design

Wherever possible, reduce the number the components on the web page to the minimum feasible. Web development and design agencies can helps clients with optimal web hosting plans for business with suggestions on web design.

This reduces the number of HTTP requests required to download media and JavaScript.

Also, ensure a good compression tool is used for compressing images, making it ideal for images where sharp, crisp lines are not of the essence. This would enhance website loading speed to a certain extent.

3. Test your Website loading Speed

As the content on the site keeps on increasing it becomes important to review the website loading speed periodically.

PageSpeed Insights - Increase page speed

Using speed testing tools like Page Speed Insights or Pingdom allows us to precisely measure the improvements and also suggestions to gain insights on which specific components are causing the website loading speed to increase.

Conclusion

One’s website visitors should be able to access all the content at all times, and as quickly as their connections possibly allow.

Purchase decisions are impacted even by millisecond delays, with slow website speed visitors can discard their purchase journey and land up on a competitor’s site.

The bottom line is website speed does matter! The faster the website loads the better user experience it can offer to visitors.

Optimize your WordPress site by enhancing website loading speed, and see metrics rapidly improving.

Exabytes is a one-stop solution for your web hosting needs, we provide WordPress hostingcPanel hosting, and more.

Do you want to host your very own website on the fastest web hosting platform with 5X faster website loading speed and that too with a free domain, just click here and our team will reach out to you.

Related articles:

Some Website Speed Test Tools To Enhance Site Performance

Why Website Speed Matters & How Web Hosting Affect it

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