Why is the speed of a website so important?

Studies show people will only wait seven seconds for your website to load before clicking the dreaded back button. It’s hard to get people to come to your site and with so many options it’s highly unlikely once someone leaves they’ll ever come back. That’s why it’s important to have a fast loading website.

 

A fast loading website will ensure your visitors get a glimpse at your content. The more people who see your website, the more people you’re likely to convert into customers.To ensure your website loads as fast as possible it’s important you can include as few images and other files as possible on each page and make sure those files are optimized.

 

Another thing that can effect the speed at which your web pages load is the coding technique. Some website builders rely heavily on communicating with their servers before loading your page. Some free and low cost competitors cram as many websites as they can onto a single server.

 

Can the speed of your website really have that much of an effect on your sales? Even if your site isn’t loading too slowly, can it still be improved? And how does Google factor into all of this? You might be surprised.

 

Nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with web site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again and around 44% of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online.

 

This means you’re not just losing conversions from visitors currently on your site, but that loss is magnified to their friends and colleagues as well. The end result – lots of potential sales down the drain because of a few seconds difference.