Site Speed. Site Speed. Site Speed. It all seems to be about site speed lately. How can we improve it? Just how fast can we make our site load? How fast is fast enough? There are so many questions and we have answers. Most importantly we want to tell you why site speed is so important — i.e. why you should give a damn. When it comes down to it, there are 2 simple reasons why site speed matters: users and Google.
Users — They Are Impatient
If a website takes more than a second or two to load, users start second-guessing if they clicked the right link and whether they should try another search result. Their finger drifts to the back button and — click. Just like that, you lost a potential customer because your website was too slow. After just 2–3 seconds of waiting for a website to load, 40% of customers will do the same.
Google Cares Too
Whether you are running ads or trying to rank organically, Google cares more and more about how fast your pages load. Why? Because users care. Google's goal is to give users the results they want — accurate information, fast. Since users are more likely to stay on a page that loads quickly, Google ranks those pages higher than their slower equivalents.
Common Reasons Websites Load Slowly
- Bloated code
- Massive, non-optimized images
- Locally hosted, non-optimized videos
- Heavy animations and transitions
- Low-tier hosting
- Heavy or outdated CMS
- Failure to utilize optimization tools and plugins
Slow Website? We Can Help
If your website is really slow, there is hope. Our team will take a look at opportunities to improve your load speed. Sometimes we can easily improve your current site, and sometimes a rebuild is the right move — when that's the case, we'll explain exactly why.