8 out of 10 people will not return to a slow website.
Websites like Google &
Amazon loses $2 billion per second due to a slow website – Research
If your website takes forever to load, we have bad news for you. Your website could be as good as not having a website. Maybe even worse. If you only focus on the beauty of your website and in the process make it too slow to load, you’re missing the point.
Beauty is great, but speed is more important. Time and again we’ve noticed that businesses that pay more attention to the speed of their website, even if it means creating a plain and simple website, have a better chance of survival as an online business. Here are some of the key reasons why a slow website sucks!
Google thinks you’re lame:
Google thinks you’re seriously lame and won’t let your website appear at the top of a Google search if they have faster options to show against the same keywords. According to a recent study by Backlinko, page load speed is the most important factor in the top 10 Google results.
Google algorithm are friends with their users i.e. the people conducting a search. Google highly considers user experience as a factor while ranking webpages on their search. And in Google’s understanding, people generally respond better to faster websites – check out their ranking criteria on https://optinmonster.com/seo-ranking-factors/
Google ranks page speed as one of the main contributor to your user experience (commonly known as UX). Clearly Google has strong reason to believe that users don’t want to spend too much time staring at their screen while a webpage loads. Think about it, you’re a user too. How do you act when you go to new webpage?
You’re probably losing business because people don’t have time:
You’re probably losing business because people don’t have time and take only a few seconds to make-up their minds before hitting the back button. According to Bluehost.com “User expectations have grown and their patience has decreased”.
Amazon conducted a survey and concluded that they lost 1% revenue for every second delayed to load their website. Now let’s put that into perspective; in 2018 Amazon’s revenue was $232.9 billion – 1% of that is $2.329 billion. Yikes.
According to another survey by the Aberdeen Group most people will spend 3-4 seconds on a website to decide if they are going to stay or move on to the next best options. Here are some of their findings:
- 57% of online consumers abandon a site after waiting 3 seconds for a page to load
- 32% of online consumers abandon a site between 1 and 5 seconds
- A site that loads in 3 seconds will see 22% fewer page views and a 50% higher bounce rate than a site that loads in 1 second.
- A site that loads in 5 seconds will see 35% fewer page views and a 105% higher bounce rate.
- A site that loads in 10 seconds experiences 46% fewer page views and a 135% higher bounce rate.
If that isn’t bad enough, Microsoft and Google reported the following statistics:
- 8 out of 10 people will not return to a “slow” site.
- 3 out of these 8 people will tell others about their bad experience.
- On the other hand, Shopzilla increased its landing page loading speed from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds and experienced a 12% increase in revenue and a 25% increase in page views.
From all of this, it is quite obvious that if your website takes much time to load, we’re afraid you’re not going to make it. Potential customers might come to your website but they won’t buy. AND THAT MY FRIEND, it terrible news!
Your credibility and reputation are at stake:
Like it or not, most people still judge a book by its cover. In case of a website, we judge them by their initial feeling we have about it at a glance. The most important part of that experience is that it should be fast. Users don’t care how hard you worked to create a website, or how real your facts are, unless you’re Einstein, Stephen Hawkins or Tylor Swift, people won’t wait for you to sing your song. They will just move on to the next available option.
If you are a business owner who conducts job interviews, don’t you judge candidates from their first appearance in a few seconds? Richard Branson (Founder Virgin Group) in his book ‘LOSING MY VIRGINITY’ says that he takes about 30 seconds to decide his future relationship with a person he meets for the first time. In case of website, we believe you don’t even have that many seconds to impress people.
If your website takes too long to load, people will only judge you and may think that you are not committed to providing quality and excellence in your work. Why? Because quality companies hire quality people who make quality products and provide quality service.
Which means that if you’re website is not top quality in all aspects, you properly are not paying attention to detail. Boohoo, you just lost your credibly as a great company by not focusing on your website speed.
Now considering that most of these surveys are conducted keeping an average user in mind which makes it your problem only if you are a B2C company.
If you’re a B2B company looking only to attract the bigwigs of the market, for example CEOs, CFOs, department heads and other decision makers, we would expect a different outcome right?
Well, let’s have a look – There’s actual data on how bankers and brokers are more critical of slow websites than the average American.
According to Forrester Research, 56% of bankers and brokers expect webpages to load in 2 seconds or less, and will be dissatisfied and unlikely to recommend a service based on a negative experience. Double yikes!
So here. Now we know why your website speed matters, and we know how to fix it if required.
Nonetheless, for a FASTER, user-friendly and attractive website, you may contact us now and get our experts to analyze your website and provide a free quote. Or please Call 0300 846 8549 to discuss.
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