How your website speed is harming sales

While many people look at the design of a business website, few look at the speed. There are several reasons. The first is that caching on browsers always makes the user’s frequently visited websites seem faster. When you visit your website daily, the loading time is significantly shorter than a new visitor’s experience.

Business owners also rarely consider measuring the speed of a website, but this can be a mistake. The average website in the UK can take up to 10.3 seconds to fully load a page on a desktop browser. On a mobile device, the average loading time can be more than double that.

Why is speed important?

Speed is vital for the importance of your user’s experience. About a quarter of all users will abandon a website if it takes more than four seconds to load a page. eCommerce websites can find that for every second it takes for their website to load, they’ll lose 7% of their revenue. If their loading times are average, they’re losing 70% of their income. Therefore, eCommerce stores can double sales just by improving their loading times.

Also, websites that have faster loading times will often have better performance on search engines like Google. With higher rankings, you can improve traffic levels from these sources.

How to improve website speed?

There are many ways that you can improve your website’s speed without changing much on your website. The first is to ensure that your server is closer to the audience. If you only sell to UK audiences, ensure your server is in the UK.

Another factor, and a significant problem for many websites, is images. Images are vital for conversions, but graphics need to be optimised to ensure loading times are low.

There are free pieces of software that can help with this. And when loading to your website, you should ensure that your graphics are of a suitable size. The maximum width for most images should be less than 600 pixels.

Conclusion

Your website’s speed is vital for the success of your business as faster websites lead to more traffic and sales. It’s also essential for your website’s SEO, so you should look into ways to improve your website’s speed. If you can load your website within one or two seconds, your customers will appreciate it.