In the new year, you may be looking to set some goals for yourself, and one of those goals might be taking care of your languishing website. Updating your website is a great goal, and identifying barriers for customers in regards to your digital presence is another goal you should make, and page speed might be it.
One barrier I come across often is a site’s page speed. Is your site a slow loading beast? How can that affect your customers and your potential to do business? What can you do to fix it?
Why improve page load speed?
Page speed is no laughing matter. According to Google, the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. We’ve all been at the receiving end of a slow loading website and frustration mounts with each passing second. A slow loading page can actually direct people to your competitors! That’s why it’s important that your page loads quickly, so visitors don’t get annoyed and leave to find some other site to read instead.
In addition to having a frustrating customer experience, a slow site may also bar you from receiving top listings on a search engine’s results page. It’s possible your slow site might be getting in your own way of finding and keeping new customers!
How long should my site take to load?
In 2018, a Google survey conducted found that the average website takes 15.3 seconds to load. However, you should strive to create a website that takes less than 4 seconds to load. Ideally, your page should take 0-2 seconds to load to optimize your conversion rate and reduce customer frustration.
How do I improve my page load speed?
I’ve put together this PDF of five ways you can easily and quickly work on your page’s loading time by yourself. These changes can very simply be made by you on your own time, or you can ask a seasoned web developer to do it for you. Want to find out how you can improve your page load speed? Sign up here and I’ll send the PDF directly to your inbox: