Having good page speed is one of the most important factors contributing to positive customer experience.

What Is Page Speed?

Page speed is the length of time it takes for your web page to load.

Why Does it Matter?

Website visitors like a quick online experience, so if your site takes longer than a few seconds to load you will lose visitors.

According to Google, if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, almost 60% of visitors will leave the page.

There are two key areas which are impacted by site speed:

User Experience

We expect sites to load almost instantly and when they don’t, we don’t stick around.

The truth is, the internet is filled with sites that have the same information as hundreds of other sites.

When a site takes to long to load, users just click the back button and head to the next link in the list. This then has an impact on conversions.

By providing your customers with a fast site experience, it makes them more likely to stick around and more likely to buy from you.

SEO

Three of the top 4 SEO ranking factors for Google are page speed dependent.

If your site has long load times, the search engines will push it down the rankings because bad results will reduce trust in the search engine.

Since shoppers rely on search engines throughout the customer journey, your site’s ranking can directly contribute to your revenue. Learn more about this by visiting our services page. 

5 Ways to Improve Website Speed

Developing a website takes a lot of work, even more so when you want a great design.

It may be cost-effective to hire out website speed optimisation, which may lead to better sales, leads and conversions.

However, here are ways you can improve your website speed on your own:

1. Use a CDN

Content delivery network, is a geographically distributed group of servers which work together to allow for fast online content delivery.

They can boost website speed by caching content in different locations. Caching servers are usually located closer to end users than the server of origin, it can reduce load times on pages.

2. Move to a Better Site Host

There are 6 types of website hosting:

• Shared hosting
• VPS (Virtual Private Servers) hosting
• Dedicated server hosting
• Cloud hosting
• Managed hosting
• Colocation

Shared hosting is typically used as it is the cheapest way to get the site online. However, VPS and dedicated hosting are a lot faster.

VPS means you get your own corner of a shared server and is a good option for sites with average traffic.

Dedicated servers mean you won’t have to share resources. However, it’s a more expensive option and you’ll have to hire a system administrator in order to maintain it.

3. Optimize Your Media Files

Media files take up a huge amount of resources. Make sure you properly optimise media files.

Here are some tips to optimise your images:

• Use PNG image files (smaller than JPGs)
• Use MP4 for video files for the smallest file size
• Serve your media at the optimal size based on visitors’ screen size
• Compress your media files
• Reduce video length whenever possible
• Upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo and embed them on your site instead of serving them locally

4. Reduce HTTP Requests

HTTP requests are made for every on page element. The more on-page elements you have, the longer your page will take to load. Once you know how many HTTP requests your site makes, you can take steps to reduce that number.

5. Use Lazy Loading

Images can increase your sites loading time along with increasing memory use.

However, removing them may reduce user experience. Lazy loading is a good solution. This is where your site loads in stages so the viewer is only looking at what is loaded. The rest of the content is put off until the viewer gets to it.

Improve Website Speed for Better Conversions

No matter how much money, time or effort has been put into your website, it won’t make a difference if it’s slow loading and no one sticks around to see it.

Prioritize your sites loading time to get the best chance at conversions, sales and leads. For more information on this or if you need assistance, why not get in contact with Savvy Business Gals. Book your  Free 30 Minute Discovery Call today!