Dear Business Builders
Faster website load times are often overlooked by website designers however, they are crucial to the success of digital marketing campaigns and have a direct impact on advertising efforts. Studies show that more than 50% of visitors to a website leave if the website fails to load in under 3 seconds.
As a result, website load speed is crucial for the user experience. And as a business and webmaster, you would lose no fewer than 50% of your visitors or potential customers if your website speed is low. Not only that but the performance of a website has been known to directly impact the search engine rankings of the site on Google.
In this article we will examine what page speed is, why it’s essential in marketing, what causes slow load times, and give you free tools to check how your website performs right now.
1. Faster Website Page Speed Load Times
Page speed is the amount of time it takes a specific page to display all its content to the visitor. Several factors contribute to page speed, and that is why you must test your website’s speed to ensure that it meets the industry’s best standard.
Website speed impacts on user experience, search engine optimization efforts, and conversion rates. Consequently, you must ensure that your website load time is as fast as possible little to ensure the highest returns from your digital marketing campaigns.
If you have a slow page speed, examine the likely causes and fix them accordingly to improve the page’s performance in terms of load time. Only when your page speed meets the best practice will you win the war on the worldwide wait and gain better returns on for your investment into advertising.
2. Why is having faster website load times are essential?
The days of waiting for a website to load while you go to grab a coffee have long gone! Customers, readers, or visitors will not bat an eye to close a site that takes an unusually long time to load. In fact, a study by Backlinko was done on page speed by analyzing 5.2 million pages on the internet and determined that if your website takes 3 – 5 seconds to load the probability of a visitor leaving your website increases by 103%.
The bar has been raised high when it comes to website speed. Consequently, here are some of the reasons why you must ensure that your website loads fast.
If your website takes 3-5 seconds to load, you lose 50% of your visitors.
50% of people expect your website to load in no more than 3-5 seconds; else, they will abandon your website. Everybody expects speed. I can’t put it any more plainly than meet the requirements, or you will be losing customers and spending money ineffectively.
On top of that, 85% of people expect mobile sites to load faster than their desktop versions. As a result, you must strive to make your website speed load in under 3 seconds on both mobile and desktop devices.
An experienced web designer will know this.
If you are advertising, you are literally wasting money.
If you decide to promote your website using search engine advertising or pay-per-click (PPC), it would be an ineffective use of time and money if your site takes long to load. Of course, you would drive traffic to your website and you will still see some returns, but you will record a very high bounce rate as visitors will abandon your site at a higher rate. Unfortunately, this is missed by many marketers in the industry and are a great cause for wasted advertising dollars.
People are impatient and don’t want to wait.
People expect speed because that is the standard in today’s world. People are getting more and more impatient. They don’t want to wait for a website to load and would rather hit the back button and try a different website (Your Competitor). So, you should make sure that your website loads fast enough to please the visitors and ensure the highest conversion rates possible.
3. Top Factors that Contribute to Slow Load Times
If your website load time is longer than the standard load times, there are some prime factors that may be responsible.
Large and Unoptimized Files
When you have several large files to load on your website, the load time will unavoidably be longer. Website design elements like Large images, flash graphics, and advertisement banners can be the cause for slow load times and become a frustration for your visitors’ experience.
Multiple and Resource Heavy Plugins
Another factor that can make your website load slowly is when your site has excessive plugins. This happens when you intend to improve functions on your website by using several plugins.
JavaScript Issues and Third-Party Software
Incorrectly implementing JavaScript or jQuery plugins will cripple the load speed of your website. Consider reducing the number of JavaScript/jQuery used on your website. If you are adding excess scripts to your website like chatbots, social media feeds, and sharing plugins, you will see a dramatic effect on your page load times.
Excessive HTTP Requests
Having excessive use of JavaScript, image files, and CSS on your website will require many HTTP requests, each of these files request to load, which affects the load speed of a website.
Bad Hosting, Lack of CND, and Poor Server Setup
Hosting is extremely important with website design and digital marketing. You will want to use an experienced and well-known premium hosting provider like one of the following…
- SiteGround
- Kinsta
- FlyWheel
- WP Engine
When looking around online there a lot of companies that recommend cheap hosting like BlueHost. In my personal experience, Blue Host has sub-par customer service, not very good technical support, and I think the reason they are highly recommended around online is because of their very generous referral program.
However, that is just me and there are many people who like to use Blue Host. They do have some of the cheapest hosting available online.
We only refer partners that we have worked with and we always have our customers and readers best interests in mind.
WordPress Plugins to Optimize Your Website
Thankfully, there are a certain few companies that have set out to help business owners and website designers tackle this issue without too much technical know-how. If you have a WordPress website, the following 2 premium plugins can help you achieve greater page speed and optimize your website.
- WP Rocket
- NitroPack
4. Difference between Load Times on Desktop and Mobile Devices
It is interesting to know that load times between desktop and mobile devices are not the same for the same website. There are slight differences in the load times of both devices due to some factors explained below:
- The average Time to First Byte (TTFB) speed on a desktop is 1.286% seconds and 2.594 seconds on mobile.
- The average Start Render speed is 2.834 seconds on desktop and 6.709 seconds on mobile.
- The average Visual Complete speed is 8.225 seconds on desktop and 21.608 seconds on mobile.
- It takes about 87.84% more time for a webpage to load on mobile than desktop.
- The average visual complete speed on a desktop is 8.225 seconds and 21.608 seconds on mobile devices.
Huge thank you to Brian Dean, Founder of Backlinko, for completing this research study.
5. Free Website Performance Tools to check your Website Page Speed
It is essential to test the speed of your existing and new web pages to ascertain their compliance with the industry standard. Here are some tools you can use to verify your website page speed.
GT Metrix
GT Metrix is one of several online tools for testing website load speed. It evaluates a website’s performance based on load time. Webmasters can take advantage of this efficient, free tool to tweak their websites for improved performance.
Google Page Speed Insights
Google Page Speed Insights is a free speed performance test tool provided by Google. It goes a step further by test website speed for both desktop and mobile devices simultaneously. It also offers suggestions on aspects to improve a website’s performance.
Pingdom Page Speed Tools
Pingdom is a free tool that is used to test a webpage load speed. It also provides help to monitor and optimize a webpage’s performance. It reports about the uptime of a website every 30 minutes. It helps to improve the level of user experience.
6. Leave a Comment
We would love to hear your feedback. Please take the time to leave us a comment below about your experiences with page speed. Any information that will shine a light on the war on the worldwide wait or help business owners tackle this issue is welcome.
