If you visit a place to buy something but the shop owner is not interested in showing you the variety of products they have - how would you feel? Chances are high, you may not visit the place for another time. Similarly, when a website’s download speed is slow, people will never return to the page in the future.
Every business wants to provide delightful experiences to its users to build a trustworthy customer base. With time, we have entered into the digital era and technology has everything to offer. People are running out of time and are hardly interested in staying on a website for more than 2 to 3 seconds. These 3 seconds can decide whether your prospect will be converted into a customer.
Website speed (otherwise called Page speed) plays a vital role in providing a smooth and delightful experience to your website visitors. In this article, we will outline what is Page speed and why is it necessary in 2021?
Page speed is the time that takes a page on a website to load. It is the span of seconds that is taken by the website to show content to the visitor. Some websites take time to load in a browser and at the same time websites with high page speed load quickly in a blink of an eye.
Page speed is not that straightforward as it seems. There are different ways to measure page speed. But some of the major ways to find out page speeds are Fully loaded page, Time to First Byte (TTFB), and First Contentful Paint (FCP).
A fully loaded page is when 100% of the website is loaded in the browser.
Here’s the list of tools we suggest for improving your Website Speed Optimization.
This helps to understand how fast the website is. Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures how long a page takes to start loading. While browsing for any website, if you find a blank page for a few seconds, which is the case with TTFB. First Contextual Paint (FCP) is when a user is able to read the content on the page.
The time taken by a page to load ample resources for the user is known as the First Contextual Paint.
No one can deny the fact that today’s generation has less patience and people are never in a mood to wait for a website to load. A website, where every second matters, and a business can’t take the risk of losing its visitors.
Here are some of the reasons why a website speed matters:
1 The initial impression matters
When a visitor lands on your website, the initial seconds can make or break your impression. Users make instant decisions about the website based on the experience they have. A good page speed can build a really good impression and creates a thought that the business is advanced enough. Whereas low-speed websites seem less trustworthy and people are afraid of making any transaction on the website.
A study says that more than 80% of online buyers don’t consider a website trustworthy with low page speed. Chances of repeat buy are less in the case of low-speed web pages and people don't like to come back.
2 Conversion rate
There is a direct relationship between website speed and conversion rate. A website that performs with utmost speed can navigate the user to the buying page compared to a low-speed page. A website with high-speed loading is always a visitor’s first choice and this leads to a high conversion rate for the business. Modify is an example of great success in implementing high page speed. The company has reduced the page loading time to 100 milliseconds and which resulted in a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion. Likewise, Walmart also experienced a 2% increase in conversion rate after optimizing their web page speed.
3 Unbeatable user experience
No matter how digitized we get, there is one thing constant for every business- Word of mouth. When a user has a smooth and impressive shopping experience, they definitely suggest the business name in their circle.
For online marketing, a page that loads with high speed leaves an impressive footprint in the mind of the visitor. Page speed offers an unbeatable user experience and creates a loop of visiting the website. And people will love to spread the good words.
4 Bounce rate
The percentage of users who don’t show interest in navigating through the page in the website results as bounce rate. If the website speed is low then users don’t stay on the webpage for a long time and close the window. BBC has stated that an extra second their page has taken to download causes them loss of 10% of regular users.
There are some factors that are responsible for page speed and play a vital role in providing a quality user experience.
1 Page weight
A website includes files, media files, and video content. The amount of resources a website always plays a crucial role in the performance of the website. Heavy CSS files, large Java scripts, video, content, HD images are some of the resources that add weight to the website. The heavyweight of the page leads to the slowing down of the website.
2 Network condition
Even if a website has less page weight if the network is not strong enough then the speed will be impacted. The local network and the ISP services quality contribute the most to network connectivity. Similarly, a mobile with 3G or 4G data and a Wi-Fi connected area has different network speeds. This also plays an important role in network conditions.
3 Location where the website is hosted
Hosting location is also one of the important factors that impact page speed. If the hosting location is far from the destination, then the content has to travel a long way before reaching the end-user. This also results in a delay in page loading.
The next question that arises to mind is how fast should a website page load? To answer it quickly, Google recommends a time within two seconds to load a page. Page load time is a primary factor that helps the website in ranking the search engine. A website should load as fast as possible as research says more than 50% of websites have more bounce rate because they load after 2 seconds.
When we talk about page speed and SEO, both are equally interconnected and necessary for any website. Ranking high on search engines is the goal of any website. This is similar to Search Engine Optimization also. Page speed decides how search engines rate and rank your website.
Google itself admitted that they aim to load a result within a second of the query entered. You can imagine how important page speed is for a website. Google will never deliver results from a website whose page speed sucks. It also discourages people from staying on the website. So, when you target to rank on Google with organic search then it becomes necessary to work on your page speed to get noticed amongst millions of competitors.
Hope this article about page speed and its importance has cleared many of your doubts. Websites play a vital role to survive online and so does page speed. Without an optimized website, no business can rank on Google. There are various speed optimization plugins available on WordPress to work on page speed.
If you are having a business and own a website. But page speed is something out of your system. Then reach out to Freelance WordPress Developers. You can also reach out to me, one of the best Website Speed Optimization Freelancers who can help you build the best responsive website for your visitors. He offers the best in industry website’s speed optimization Services at a very affordable price.