Back in 2010, Google announced the integration of speed into their organic search-ranking algorithm and since then website speed optimization has become an important factor in digital marketing.

According to a research report carried out by the Aberdeen Group, for each second delay in page load time, a website gets 11% less page views, 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions, which many big companies such as Walmart and Amazon found to be true, turning page speed into an important feature not only to optimize for search engines, but to offer a better user experience.

Here are a couple of things you need to know about website speed optimization and its relevance in improving conversion:

1. Slow loading pages = low user engagement

Having slow loading pages in a website decreases a user’s time spent on the page, which directly leads to decreasing the chances of conversion as well. Besides, it is well known that Google considers user behavior data to influence rankings.

2. Slow pages = no conversions

It has been widely demonstrated that slow loading websites decrease conversions and sales significantly. A study carried out by Akamai’s survey back in 2009 found that 47% of users expected sites to load in 2 seconds or less.

3. Simplifying the design helps improve a site’s speed

One of the best and quickest ways to improve the speed of a website is to simplify its design. A way of doing this is by streamlining the number of elements on the site, using CSS instead of images and combining multiple style sheets into one.

4. It impacts revenue and operational expenditure

Slow loading sites increase the spending of capital resources destined to pay for efforts to enhance website performance, leading to poor resource management and a decrease in revenue.

On the opposite side, investing in website speed optimization will make better use of your company’s capital resources in favor of decreasing page load times which in return will increase revenue.

5. Slow loading pages impact usability

Nobody enjoys browsing through slow and intricate websites, not even search engines and web crawlers. Website usability goes hand in hand with customer loyalty, so things such as slow page speed and lack of website responsiveness cause the relationship to break down.

Ideally, a website should be easy to navigate for all users, it should contain relevant information, should be accessible from all devices, browsers and operating systems to maximize its performance.

Investing time, money and effort in website speed optimization pays off. A study carried out by Akamai found that 52% of online shoppers expect quick page loads and they consider this as important for their loyalty to the site.
Speeding up your website is crucial not only just for ranking well in search engines, but to increase sales, so if your website is not yet optimized for speed, we recommend you to do so as soon as possible to stop losing money.