When it comes to your website’s User Experience (UX), every second counts. The amount of time it takes for your pages to load could make or break your success. Users have millions of websites to choose from so if they don’t find yours satisfactory, they can easily go to the next. Let’s look at why page loading speed is so important and how it can affect your bottom line.
What is page loading time?
Page loading time is the time it takes to download and view the entire contents of a page. It starts from the moment a user makes a request to your web server and ends when the page is fully rendered in their browser. Page loading time is a key performance metric that can affect your customer’s experience and retention rate on your website.
Measuring your page loading time is easy. All you need is a tool such as Google Page Insights. There’s no need for you to do any heavy lifting, the tool will work its magic once you type in your URL and tell you how fast your page loads.
How does page loading time affect your business?
A slow website can frustrate your users. If they find that your page is taking too long to load, they’ll likely leave. In 2006, tech giant Amazon found that for every 100ms added to their page load time, they could lose $107 million a year. Neil Patel puts these statistics into perspective demonstrating that if your page speed went from 1 second to 3 seconds, you could face a 32% increase in bounce rate. And that number could climb up to 90% of your page took 5 seconds to load or over 100% if it took 6 seconds.
And if you’re still not convinced that page speed is vital, here’s another way it can affect your business: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Google has been pushing webmasters to focus on Core Web Vitals and rewarding them with higher search rankings if their metrics are up to par.
Google also takes their users into high regard. They want to recommend websites in their search results that have good UX. So if decreasing your page loading time will result in better UX, then it’s a safe bet that Google will want to improve your rankings.
How fast is fast enough?
Time is money. If you’re not investing correctly, you can lose out big time. Research shows that 70% of your consumers could be unwilling to buy from your website if they find your page loading time is too slow. So what is considered slow? Google’s consumer insights show that users will leave a mobile site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
There are a few things that can impact your page’s performance including the device your user is accessing your website from and their internet speed. But, it’s important to make sure that you do everything you can to make their experience better. Focus on their needs and you’ll end up with a website that is desirable for your users, and a conversion rate that is desirable for your business’s success.