A website is your interaction interface with the world, and how it responds affects your interaction. The first click creates an impression on the visitor and might decide if they stay or clock out. As much as more features make the website appealing, website speed is still the main attraction. This is why your website loading speed matters to your online visitors and customers.
First User Impression
A customer visiting your website for the first time expects it to load quickly. 3 seconds is the average time for a website to load. Anything longer than that is a throw-off and might lead to loss of business.
There is a relationship between fast loading and reliability; a website that loads faster gives the customer a good impression. They can view what you offer and decide in record time. A slow website is a turn-off and annoying.
On average, 40% of all visitors opening a website are most likely to abandon it if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Do not let your website be part of these statistics.
Website Ranking
One of the components of web ranking is web page loading. Google and other search engines are speed-obsessed, and their algorithms rank a website with a faster loading higher. Therefore, you need a faster-loading website to improve your online ranking.
That shouldn’t compromise the quality, quantity and relevancy of the content on the webpage. With high ranking comes high traffic, which exposes the business to more people online.
More importantly, you should optimise the pages to improve their indexing and faster loading. In essence, your hosting should be fast enough to improve its linking on search engines.
Sales Conversions
Customers looking for goods or services grow impatient with slow websites. They might even stop coming to your page since they do not derive any impact on the time spent on your website. Pages take time to bounce back or load products. A 1-second delay leads to a 7% reduction in conversion, which eats into web page ranking.
More so, Google penalises websites with slow loading speeds, especially e-commerce websites. They reduce their ranking with time since their resources do not bring the intended outcome. As businesses go online, fast web loading is not an option. There is enormous potential online, which leads to more sales and more revenue.
How to Improve Website Speed
- Compress files, especially images, to reduce the file size. It improves the rendering times, especially on mobile devices.
- Minimise the number of plugins, link shorteners and redirects.
- If there is any render-blocking JavaScript, remove it.
- Avoid using redirects if possible. The more they are, the slower the website.
- Continue testing the website regularly and improve any recommendations cited.
- Remove any unnecessary data from the site, including dummy content or unused pages.
- Move your website to a faster hosting, which has a higher SSD. If possible, get a web hosting service provider in Kenya with SSD NVMe.
- Use CDN (content delivery network). They cache content in multiple locations globally.