People like things fast. In fact, they don’t just like it, they expect it. We want same day delivery, a 30-minute oil change, and prescription eyeglasses done in one hour. If the physical world needs to be fast, then your website needs to be even faster. Webpage loading time is an essential part of any website’s user experience. While customers do care about aesthetic design and unique widgets, what they want the most is speed. Speed can even affect search engine rankings. The faster your website loads the higher you could be ranked by search engines. Don’t get left behind, increase conversion with faster website speeds.
One second
One second, that’s how fast 30 percent of website visitors expect a webpage to load. A webpage that those same users want to be loaded with a robust, interactive, and engaging content. And that one second might be too long for some users. 18 percent of website visitors expect a webpage to load immediately. If your business is looking to upgrade your website, the area you should be most focused on is increasing website speed. Not only will faster website speed improve user experience but it will also increase your conversion rate and return on investment (ROI). Google recommends that marketers optimize their websites so that above-the-fold content loads in one second or less.
That extra waiting, even 500 milliseconds, lowers customer engagement by up to 8 percent and causes a 26 percent increase in stress and frustration. Higher stress and frustration is not what you want your website to be causing. A quarter of website users will leave a website if it is too slow and takes more than five seconds to load. Even a one-second delay in load time can decrease your conversion rates. That one second could mean 7 percent loss in conversion, 11 percent fewer site views, and a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction and retention.
Mobile Web Users
In 2016, mobile web users surpassed desktop web users. While it’s great that users are accessing websites through mobile devices, when it comes to speed, mobile users are the most demanding. Only 20 percent of mobile users will wait more than 20 seconds for a web page to load. 17 percent of users will wait 11-15 seconds for a mobile webpage to load. The highest percentage of users, 30 percent, will wait for 6-10 seconds for a web page to load on mobile. 16 percent of users will wait between 1-5 seconds for a mobile webpage to load. And 3 percent of mobile web users will only wait for one second for a web page to load before abandonment.
Poor mobile site design, excessive resource files, heavy use of Flash, excessive external media, failing to compress web pages, and bad image-file optimization can all create slow mobile website load times.
Desktop Web Users
While desktop users have fallen behind the number of mobile web users, the good news is that desktop web users are more patient. At least slightly. Still, 74 percent of desktop users will leave your website if it takes longer than 6-10 seconds to load. Additionally, 46 percent of visitors will not return to a poorly performing and slow- loading website. That’s a loss of views and conversions due entirely too slow website speeds. The ideal load time for conversions is a mere two seconds. Almost half of users expect a webpage to load in less than two seconds. And 40 percent of visitors leave a website that takes more than five seconds to load.
E-Commerce
For an e-commerce website, every second you can improve in loading time can increase website conversion up to 2 percent. In addition to higher conversions, a fast loading website can even retain loyal customers by up to 52 percent.
While increasing speed can increase sales, the opposite is also true, a slow web page can decrease sales. Almost 80 percent of customers who are not satisfied with the website speed are less likely to buy from the same website again. Even a 3-second delay of waiting can decrease your customer retention rate by up to 16 percent. And those unhappy web users will tell their friends. In fact, 44 percent of customers will tell their friends about a poorly performing website. Not the kind of word of mouth businesses are looking for.
Make increasing website speed a priority for your business. For every second that you can shave offload time you will not only increase conversions but you will also boost customer confidence and trust in your site, and create loyal customers. Increase conversion with faster website speeds and, as a bonus, improve search engine ranking, attract more traffic, and lower bounce rates.
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