This week it was revealed that 73{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} of consumers would move to a competitor if a website is slow to load.
So, in short, YES! Page speed is, clearly, massively actually important.
A recent survey by Eggplant revealed these quite surprising statistics. In a survey of 3,200 adults from the UK and US, they found that businesses with a slow or underperforming website are likely to lose 73{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} of customers to a competitor.
Interestingly, website speed is so important that 60{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} said they feel much more negative to a brand if its site is consistently slow to load. Meanwhile, 23{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} said they feel the same way if a site is down or not working.
70{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} of UK adults surveyed rated website speed as important when it comes to online activity. Out of this 70{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441}, 33{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} said website speed was very important, while just 2{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} of the overall said speed was not important at all.
This comes as google rolls out the last of it’s mobile-first indexing. Having fast-loading content is still helpful for those looking at ways to perform better for mobile and desktop users.
Google has long indicated site speed, and as a result, page speed, is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. In addition, a slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, which negatively affect indexation.
It’s clear why Google would choose page speed as a ranking factor, seeing as so many people would avoid a site and business if the load speed was too slow. As a result, more and more people are hiring agencies to step in and help. In the UK around 3{668284420e3c3e703f86693cee83f1c1285e9c7b8ecc41c13b37eea0ef4cf441} of the UK workforce are in marketing and Manchester Digital Marketing Agencies are becoming more and more in demand.
How can people decrease page load speed? Here’s a quick checklist :
- Optimize your image size
- Use Content Delivery Network
- Avoid self hosted videos
- Use CSS sprites
- Switch off the plugins you won’t use
- Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Having a fast loading website is clearly important no only to Google, but to a number of consumers. If your business is losing website conversions because of load speed, your analytics will be an indicator. You will need to check bounce rate and page speed.
Completing this checklist should improve load time – which should keep people on your site and result in more conversions.