1. Reduces page views by up to 11%
2. Decreases customer satisfaction by up to 16%
3. Reduces conversions by up to 7%

Page speed has long been a ranking factor for several year now. So if Google and other search engines care about your website load speed – it therefore should matter to you. The trajectory appears to be growing higher year over year as to its importance. Therefore, it behooves you to strongly consider where load speed ought to fit in your overall marketing strategy.

What began as another metric to determine how quickly a site visitor will see the content has turned into a powerful and influential indicator of overall user experience. As a website owner, it’s certainly in your best interest to take note.

In today’s online marketplace, time is critical. Consumers are bombarded with advertising and marketing from dusk to dawn. Every precious minute means the entire world to them. When your website wastes their time, they take their purchasing power elsewhere – to your competition. So it follows that pages that load faster and deliver content quickly, also satisfy the web visitor’s needs quicker.

You may be wondering how could load speed affect your website success. Well, wonder no more, we shall explain it to you with total clarity. The facts are that the longer a website takes to load, the more the likelihood its bounce rate will also skyrocket. That’s a big no-no to search engines.

A high bounce rate indicates to search engines that web visitors didn’t find your page useful or engaging enough to earn their time, as a consequence, your site rankings drop. For e-commerce sites, if your checkout pages load too slowly, you are bound to have more abandoned carts who migrate over to your competition.

The longer a webpage takes to load, the more its bounce rate will skyrocket. A high bounce rate tells search engines that users don’t find the page content useful, so its rankings will slip. And e-commerce sites will inevitably lose customers if their checkout page is even a little bit slower than those of the competition.

With Google and other search engines content is always king with relevance as the queen. If you want to rise up the search rankings for your particular niche, it’s vital to speed up your website for a better chance at sustained SEO success.

Because as we alluded to earlier, to Google and other search engines, the web visitor comes first – slow load times mean dissatisfied users. Google’s research showed that the chance of a bounce increased by 32% when a page load time went from one to three seconds, and by 90% when the page load time went from one to five seconds. If a site takes up to 10 seconds to load, then the chance of a bounce increases to 123%.

This is all Google research – it pays dividends to take note. Be very aware what Google is looking for, then take the necessary steps to deliver accordingly. Visitors spend more time on a website when its pages load faster. In fact, users visit 8.9 pages when load time is two seconds, versus just 3.3 pages when load time is 8 seconds.

In order to earn sustained success online, you need to deliver a valuable user experience that will have customers refer their family, friends and associates. If web visitors experience slow loading speed on your website, not only do you lose them, you lose any future referrals. Loading speed also influences customer loyalty.

Furthermore, load speed impacts how your website fares against the competition. 79% of online shoppers who have a dissatisfying experience are less likely to buy from the same site again, while 64% would simply purchase from a different online store.

Absolutely no reason to delay any further. Every second you delay testing your website’s loading speed could simply mean lost revenue to your online earnings. Surely, you got into online business to make money, so take that next step today to put your company in the best position to succeed tomorrow.