Slow-to-load pages are one of the top reasons that people leave your site without ever coming to appreciate what you can offer them. And, it’s one of the big reasons why you’re losing out on repeat visits and purchases, too!
The Cost Of Slow-to-load Websites
Speeding up your website’s responsiveness to desktop, tablet and mobile browsers could generate significant rates of return considering that:
- 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less;
- 40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load;
- 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to visit again;
- 52% of online shoppers state that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty;
- 3 seconds of waiting decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%; and
- 44% of online shoppers will tell their friends about a bad experience online.
Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/
What you can do today to speed up your website
Here’s 5 things you can do with relative ease — and without spending anything beyond time — to speed up your website:
- Minimize the individual types of content loaded on a page. Each picture, chunk of text, social media feed, slider, gallery, advertisement, video, etc requires your web server to stop, think, look, grab and place. Keep your homepage lean while simplifying your internal pages to one topic and one primary visual element;
- Keep your images “light”. Use a compression tool, such as TinyPNG, to minimize the size of pictures being displayed — consider that a high res image taken from your everyday DSLR camera might need to be reduced by up to 95% in order to load quickly;
- Keep the meat of your message within the space that appears when the user first lands on a page. Chances are, if they don’t find what they’re looking for immediately, then they’ll probably bounce back to their search results and look someplace else;
- Minimize the number of plugins that your website uses. Plugins are tools that simplify the process of creating and maintaining your site – SEO, image galleries, form data collection, animation, etc. Each of those tools must be “picked up” and carried around by your website so that they’re ready for use. It would be like you lugging around a tool box filled with every tool in your workshop when a single screwdriver is all you need. Only activate/use plugins essential to your website’s immediate needs; and
- Integrate Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) into your site. This is generally managed using a plugin and significantly reduces the time it takes for your posts to load. And, Google looks VERY favorably on AMP-enhanced websites since it was an initiative that they spearheaded.
Test The Validity Of Your Page’s Accelerated Mobile Page Formatting
With all of this in mind, take the time to experience your website as if you were a first-time visitor or a repeat buyer – how quickly can you get to the answer you’re looking for from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the specifics about your industry jargon or brand names?
- Can you get to an answer in less than 2 clicks?
- Does your search tool point to the solution within the top 3 results?
- What’s that overall experience like using your mobile phone or a tablet?
- Do pages load quickly?
- Is it easy to find and navigate from your menus to specific product pages?
- Can people quickly find supporting evidence by way of testimonials, feedback or reviews?
- Are images crisp, clear & quick to load?
- Can the user reach a salesperson or customer service person within 1 click of landing on a page?
Answering these questions will provide you with a check list of things to get done on your site that WILL enhance and improve the user experience – keeping them on your site longer while digging deeper into all of the great content that you have to offer.
DIT’s design & development team can help you speed up your website and excite mobile users. Call DIT, now, @ (905) 209-9079 to discuss your needs.
DIT has a solution waiting for you!
Click To Prevent This