We all know that patience is a virtue worth developing. But when we come across a slow loading website, that virtue is all but forgotten.
The faster the load time of your website, the better the user experience. Put simply, a fast website is essential for your digital strategy. A rapidly loading website boosts user experience, conversion rates and eventually revenues. It also helps with your search engine rankings, which is essential to steer ahead of the competition.
There are several benefits to having a fast-loading website. In this post, we look at the top five reasons to ensure your website is fast.
Get the first impression right with a fast loading website
First impressions are everything on the internet.
Your visitors, customers and users will judge your business based on their experience with your website.
If your website loads quickly, you will make a solid first impression. It’s the best thing that can happen to win your visitors. If your site loads quickly, your new visitors are instantly happy.
It’s simple psychology. Just like we consider top ranking websites to be credible, we trust websites that load fast and perceive them to be reliable and professional.
However, a slow website will create the opposite feelings. We may think of a slow website as unsafe and untrustworthy. And changing that negative first impression is an uphill task.
When it comes to user experience, there are no second chances. In fact, 79% of users will never return to such a website.
Offer a better user experience by improving your website’s page load speed
User experience is a great way to set your business apart from your competition.
Put simply, good UX design is the process of building a stellar and uncomplicated experience for website visitors. There are two ways to achieve this:
- Give your visitors what they are searching for.
- Give it to them quickly.
That’s where page load speed comes into the picture. A fast-loading website is an integral part of offering a positive user experience to your visitors.
When users can find what they are searching for quickly and easily, they are sure to be pleased by it. However, if your website leaves them confused or frustrated, it will only sour their experience. Such an experience will hardly impress them, much less persuade them to do business with you.
Fast load time helps increase conversions
Slow website is the death knell for conversions.
About 40% of visitors will completely abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. That’s 4 out of 10 visitors.
Let’s say your website sees a traffic of 50,000 visitors a month. If your website were to take 4 seconds to load, you stand to lose 20,000 visitors.
Today’s digitally connected users are looking for instant gratification. So, website speed is an important aspect for online users. In fact, fast-loading websites experience lower bounce rates and improved conversion rates. A study by Google suggests that a one-second improvement in page load time can deliver 27% more conversions for mobile users. With more than 70% of online shopping happening on mobile devices, website speed plays an important role.
Boost your search engine rankings with a fast website
Your website speed has a direct impact on your Google rankings.
Google has been categorically upfront about its commitment to speed. They have made it their mission to ensure the web is super-fast, useful and accessible.
In their effort to offer the best experience to search users, Google’s algorithm gives preference to websites that load quickly.
Since 2010, page load speed of a website has been an important ranking factor.
What’s more, Google reduces the number of crawlers it sends to your website if the server is slower than two seconds. This means that if you make an update or add a new blog, Google is less likely to find it, which can do a lot of harm to your search engine rankings.
Slow website speed has a huge effect on your business in the long run
By now, you already know that a slow website will slow down your traffic. Almost half of your prospective visitors are gone. However, there are some crucial long-term effects as well.
Your slow loading website hinders your growth and word-of-mouth.
Over time, people avoid referring your business to others owing to poor user experience. Authority websites are unlikely to link back to your content. It may even keep people from signing up to your email list.
A slow website affects credibility, which can damage your brand reputation.
Switch to fast WordPress hosting plans from Designweb
The first step to get your website up to speed is to test its load time. Use Google PageSpeed Insights tool to test your website’s speed.
Looking for a fast WordPress hosting service? Look no further than Designweb.
If you are managing a WordPress website, Designweb’s managed hosting service is all you need to get it up to standard. Our fast WordPress hosting service is optimised for speed.
Our WP Essential package comes with Superfast caching for faster page loading times and a better customer experience. Our WP Premium package comes with ‘Lightning Fast’ loading times through additional dedicated server resources.
