Suppose that you are sitting in a restaurant to eat but the waiter is acting slower than your expectations. This scenario will not only frustrate you but also make you speak in very poor terms about that restaurant. The same is the case with websites. A website with poor speed always results in a negative user experience, poor search engine rankings, and lower overall traffic.
What is website speed?
Website speed or website performance is all about how fast a website gets fully functional on a browser when a user comes to browse it. Speed plays a very crucial role in the overall utility and usability of a website because poorly loading webpages can drive the user away to the extent of no return. On the other hand, the fast-loading websites created by the best web development company Gurgaon grab more traffic and also have a better conversion rate.
Page Speed vs. Site Speed: Understanding the phenomenon
Although both page speed and site speed seem to be quite similar, they are different from one another. Site speed is not the same as page speed. Site speed denotes the average of how fast different pages of the site are functioning. On the other hand, page speed is about how long a visitor will have to wait to begin browsing a particular page. There is a very thin line between the two.
Page Speed Metrics at a glance
Page speed is considered to be an extremely complex factor associated with the functional performance of a website. And, to speed it up, one needs to understand its metrics that include:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): It represents that the main contents of the page are loaded appropriately.
- First Input Delay (FIP): It deals with the interactivity of the page representing the time point a user first interacts with the website, to when the browser responds to the said interaction.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It highlights the instances when the layout of a page shifts unexpectedly.
This blog post further explores the significance of the speed of websites in the following points:
Conversion Rate
So many studies have revealed that the speed of a website drastically affects its conversion rate. Conversion rate is the term that talks about the rate at which users accomplish a desired action. Users not only love and admire fast-loading websites but also conversion that takes place at a higher rate on them when compared to slower websites. Below are some facts about the fast-loading phenomenon:
- Mobify has found that if they slow the loading speed of their homepage by 100 milliseconds, the action results in a 1.11% uptick in session-based conversion
- Retailer AutoAnything records a 12-13% increase in sales after they reduce page load time to half.
- Walmart states that an improvement in page loading time by just 1-second boosts their conversion rate by 2%.
Slow page loading speed increases the bounce rate
The bounce rate in the realm of the web is the percentage of users who leave a website within a few seconds only after visiting a particular webpage. The faster they go, the more the rate bounces. Users take no time to leave a website in case the page-loading frustrates them by taking more time than expected. The BBC has discovered that they had to lose more than 10% of their traffic for each additional second their website took for loading. This is the reason speed is always a top priority of the providers of services for professional website designing in Delhi.
Google considers fast-loading speed as a positive ranking factor
The internet search giant Google has made it clear many times that it operates by the speed obsession concerning everything that deals with the web. Matt Cutts (Google’s former head of web spam) once admitted officially that Google always prefers to fast-loading websites when it comes to giving them raking in SERPs. Notwithstanding, Google has also clarified that no compromise should be made with the quality of content or the relevancy of the webpage material while striving to make the pages load faster. Keeping in view the same, the top website development company in Faridabad remains particular while accomplishing a project.
Slow speed drastically affects your brand image in the long term
It is an open secret now that slower-loading websites lead to an instant visitor drop-off. In various studies, it has been found that slower-loading websites lose more than half of the potential visitors at once. But what is more serious is that lethargic websites also have a large number of long-term bad effects. The long loading, over time, paralyzes the website’s word-of-mouth as well as natural growth.
It happens because no prudent visitor refers to the products or services of a slow website to others for the poor experience rendered. In such a scenario, no established and well-recognized website would love to link back to a slower website’s content. Some users may even put off signing up to the newsletter associated with the website concerned. Due to the lack of credibility, all these factors will hurt your brand in the long run.
The End Note
At Sterco Digitex, we have been designing and developing techno-rich, highly functional and fast-loading business websites for a wide range of industries for 25 years. We can take on even the most intriguing challenges in the realm of web development and designing. Approach us today to design and develop a website on any scale and magnitude.