The importance of your websites loading speed is now more vital than ever. It’s imperative that your website provides a good user experience to increase both conversions and encourages users to return. The user experience begins with how quickly your website loads and therefore, it’s importance cannot be overstated.

Modern Users Are More Impatient

As technology has improved, so has the speed at which we expect it to work. Few people enjoy waiting for pages to load, especially if they only had a mild or passing interest in the page they were loading.

Internet users want results immediately and the longer they have to wait for a page to load, the more likely they are to lose interest. Even if their interest is enough to see them wait for the initial load, subsequent slow loadings as they navigate your website will have an extremely negative effect on their experience.

Research by Google discovered that 53% of mobile website visitors would leave a webpage if it hadn’t loaded within three seconds. That was four years ago, so the percentage is likely to have grown further since then.

SEO and Website Load Speed

For the past decade, Google has incorporated website load speeds into their search ranking algorithms in order to improve the experience of internet users. Google’s stated reasoning for including the load speed measurement is that faster-loading sites create happier users.

Google also revealed that they have conducted internal studies which revealed people spend less time on a site when it responds slowly.

Conversions and Bounce Rates

Conversions are the name of the game, so it is crucial to provide landing pages and other pages visited first by potential customers that entice them to continue browsing your content. Having them wait around longer than they would like is not a good look to start things off with.

Website load speed is also one of the main reasons why visitors ‘bounce’ off of the sites they are visiting. A ‘bounce’ refers to someone who only views one page on a site before leaving. Bounce rates are the number of people visiting your site but then leaving without venturing to any other pages. There can be a number of reasons for the bounce, but one of the main ones is a slow load speed.

Most if not all visitors to a site will assume the initial load speed of the first page they view will apply to the entire site.

If you are interested in website development that takes into consideration website speed and usability, please contact our experienced team. Our team can be contacted on +1 800 974 7219 ext. 202 or by completing the form here and will be happy to discuss your requirements with you.