When it comes to your website, you want to provide the most seamless experience possible, and that begins before your users even reach the content on your site. The digital age has led to consumers becoming more and more impatient online and some users won’t even wait 2 seconds for a site to load before leaving. Site speed impacts user experience, rankings and conversions. In this blog, we have compiled some of the best information to highlight why site speed is so important and why you should be striving for a website that's as fast as possible. Consumer expectations are high and first impressions can determine whether that user is a loyal customer or possible loss.
SEO and ranking
Site speed can often be overlooked as a vital aspect of SEO, however improving your site speed provides many benefits towards ranking on search engines. Site speed is an important ranking factor, that only becomes increasingly important on mobile sites. This means that your site could rank higher just by making simple changes to increase its loading speed, such as optimising images or removing any codes or scripts that aren’t in use. Slow load times on a site, especially the first page that is viewed, means that users often leave without even viewing your content. This can damage ranking further, as Google will see the users visit as unsuccessful, making it even harder to climb your way back up to the top.
User experience
The speed of a site has a direct impact on user experience. Understanding your customer journey can help you to see what might be going wrong regarding your site speed and the content on your website - by putting yourself in the position of the customer and asking the following questions, you can assess just how effective your user experience is:
- Is navigation simple, easy to follow and fast?
- Has all the content loaded; are users able to interact with everything?
- Are those interactions as smooth as possible, or do users meet lag?
- Does all content load on all pages simultaneously?
Although these questions may seem simplistic, they can make a big difference in your ranking and can help you to identify what might be slowing your site down. Taking action regarding these can then enhance user experience and naturally lead to a higher ranking and more conversions.
Bounce rates & Conversions
Site speed does not only impact ranking and user experience, it can also enhance other important metrics. For example, a fast site speed can help to lower bounce rates, another Google ranking factor. Bounce rates refer to how quickly users leave your website, and if users are quickly bouncing off your page due to a slow site speed, they are not converting.
Bounce rates are of particular importance as they can identify which of your pages are causing the problem, therefore highlighting why you might not be converting users to your end goal, whether it be a purchase, sign-up or something else. Small changes can have large impacts on site speed, which ultimately means your site can do its job of helping to grow your business.
At Verto we have the experience and knowledge to help you increase your site speed as we have for many of our clients’ websites. Contact us today if you think we could help or want to understand exactly what we can do for you.
