Whether you want to sell products, attract new clients, or showcase your work, it’s not enough to have a website. It must be easy to use and find, attractive, and provide the information that visitors want. A crucial yet often overlooked element of a quality website is site speed, which matters as much as ever. Here’s why.
You can probably guess that visitors will leave your site if it loads too slowly. And if your competitor’s website doesn’t have that problem, you’re in trouble. This could mean lost sales or clients. Keep in mind that slow loading is more noticeable on slower connections. While many people have high-speed mobile connections, some users do not consistently have access to fast Internet.
However, faster connections mean that visitors expect sites to load even more quickly than they once did. Websites should load under four seconds whenever possible. Each second required to load your site decreases conversion rates. Even if you can’t reduce loading time to four seconds or less, you can increase your conversion rate by shaving off as many seconds as possible.
However, it’s not only customers who are worried about slow websites. Search engines such as Google consider this when ranking your website. A slow website may show up much lower in the search results. Impatient visitors may never get a chance to leave your site if they can’t find it in the first place.
There are a variety of ways to improve site speed. Consider compressing images and video, minimizing code, reducing Javascript, employing caching, and using a content delivery network. Some of these methods take minimal effort. For example, if you use WordPress to power your website, you can install cashing and image optimization plugins with just a few clicks. However, you might need professional help to speed up a slow database or move to a new host if that’s why your website loads so slowly.
Finally, consider whether your website needs a mobile version specifically, which typically removes unnecessary features and make sure to test those changes on both the desktop and mobile versions of your site. Various tools measure site speed to ensure you’re on the right track.