We live in a world where everything happens very quickly. People expect instant gratification. This mindset change has also reflected on customers expectations and purchase decision process. The rules of business have changed.
With the digital disruption, keeping customers happy has become a very challenging task for the businesses. Customers nowadays have information, different devices, and channels, but also an unlimited number of options. They have the power to choose and it’s easier than ever to switch brands.
There’s no second chance to make a first impression
Your company website is the face of your business and customers’ first impression of your brand depends on the digital experience you provide them. In the previous blog post, we talked about the importance of stunning product visualization and how the average web user forms an opinion about a brand within two-tenths of a second.
With a constant struggle to be interesting and relevant in order to grab visitors attention, companies burden their websites with lots of content, making their web pages bigger and more complex than ever.
And just when you thought that you can fill your website with unique content and win the business race, it turns out there’s a catch: visitors love content-rich websites, but they will not waste their time if your page is slow.
A research from Soasta shows that customers are impatient when it comes to web performance and digital customer experience:
- 50% of unsatisfied visitors will go to a competitor’s website
- 35% will have a negative perception of the brand and
- 22% will never return to the slow site.
Source: Soasta – Web Performance Is User Experience
Back to the basics
Page load time is web performance metric that represents the time needed to fully display the content of a web page.
There is a wide range of factors that affect page load speed, and while you can’t influence some of them (like user connection speed), you are in charge for the rest:
1.Server – this can have a crucial impact on your page load speed. Even though small businesses choose shared hosting as a more economical approach, dedicated server and at least 99.5% uptime is a must for larger companies.
2.File types and sizes – there is direct proportion between file types and sizes and page load speed; the larger the number and size of files, the longer it takes to load the page.
3.Browser – different browsers interpret the code differently. This is true even for different versions of the same browser. That is why cross-browser testing is the key to seamless website performance.
4.Software compatibility – even though plugins and widgets add to the functionality of your website, they also burden it. This means that you have to find the right balance in order not to slow down your website.
5.Traffic – website traffic is similar to shop queue. The more people come into the shop, the slower they get served. Make sure your website is ready for high traffic volume.
That being said, it is very clear that page load time has a significant impact on your business. Customers will not wait forever for your page to load.
How long is forever?
“Sometimes, just one second” – says the White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
This is true, especially when we are talking about page load time. According to Skilled, one second delay means 11% loss of page views and 7% reduction in conversions. On the other hand, if your site makes $100,000/day, one-second improvement in page speed brings $7,000 daily.
Studies have shown that a page load speed can be critical for your business. Here are few aspects that can be heavily affected by your website performance:
- Bounce rate – According to Google, as page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of bounce increases 32%
- User engagement – Financial Times found out that a 1-second delay in page load time caused 4,9% drop in the numbers of articles read, while a 3-second delay led to a 7,2% drop.
- Conversions – For every 1 second of improvement to load time, Walmart experienced a 2% increase in conversions;
- Revenue – A page load slowdown of just one second could cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales per year.
- SEO – Even though relevance remains the most important ranking factor, Google confirms that website speed can also affect your SEO.
The bottom line is that your bad web performance can negatively influence your brand advocacy and it can undermine your reputation.
4 Proven Tactics to Improve Page Load Time
When it comes to web performance, every second counts. Here are few tips that can help you improve your page load speed:
1.Compress files and large web service responses – there are a lot of tools that can help you compress files and different web elements. GZip is integrated into most web servers and can be easily enabled.
2.Optimize images – reduce image transfer time by reducing the image size. You can reduce the image size by 3-8% losslessly or up to 25-60% with an unnoticeable loss. Easy-to-use tools for this purpose are TinyJPG / TinyPNG.
3.Content delivery network – helps you distribute files around the globe faster by using a network of servers at different locations. This reduces the time needed to access a file resulting in faster page load time.
4.Minification – optimize the code by removing unnecessary or redundant data. This process improves speed and user experience.
Mobile is the New Black
We are witnessing a complete shift in user experience. The adoption of mobile devices explodes. According to Zenith’s Mobile Advertising Forecasts, in 2018, 66% of individuals in 52 key countries will own a smartphone. Knowing that more than 50% of all web traffic is coming from smartphones and tablets, it becomes clear that focus on mobile can be a significant competitive advantage.
Source: Google Analytics Data, U.S., Q1 2016.
When it comes to customer expectations, they are even higher for mobile websites. 74% mobile users will abandon a site after waiting 5 seconds for a page to load and 46% would not return to a website that performs poorly.
If you thought that your business is doing just fine and you don’t have to pay special attention to mobile strategy, think twice. These two updates from Google are proof that we live in an era of smartphones and that mobile can make or break your business:
1.The Speed Update – having in mind how important is speed for the users, Google announced that starting from July 2018 page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.
2.Mobile-first Indexing – if you still think that “the Speed Update” is not very important to you because most of your searches come from desktop computers, the fact that Google will shift indexing from desktop to mobile-first should change your mind. Since most searches on Google are from mobile devices, Google has decided to use a mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site. This shift will happen during 2018, so you should start planning mobile improvements as soon as possible.
Sharing their best practices, Google advises under 3 seconds mobile page load time, less than 50 pieces of content, and less than a 500KB total size of a mobile webpage.
Aesthetics or Speed – the eternal struggle in E-commerce
We already talked about the importance of stunning product visualization, but everyone who is long enough in e-commerce knows that providing superior visuals requires complicated platforms and plugins that burden the site and ultimately hurt the page load speed.
So, what’s the catch?
SaaS companies are also aware that page load speed is crucial for better user engagement and higher conversion rates, so this becomes one of the main fields for improvement. New product updates are focused on quality and speed at the same time.
Cylindo’s 360 HD Viewer for product visualization provides a personalized shopping experience beyond your imagination with fastest 4k rotating imagery on the market that loads in milliseconds. You no longer need to choose between aesthetics and speed.
Ready to speed up your business and grow your conversion rates?
