December 10, 2019

Why is page speed important for conversion optimization?

It doesn’t matter big or small, low page speed hurts every business. Because Page speed optimization is important for conversions. And there are stats that back-up this theory of ‘lower page load time- higher the conversion’. For example:
– Walmart found that an increase in page speed by one-second results in a 2% increase in conversion rate.
– Yahoo saw a 9% increase in traffic to every 400 milliseconds of web page speed improvement.
There are few benefits of increasing page speed, which has a direct effect on your conversion rate.

Increased Engagement

page speed increases user engagement
If the average page load time for your website is more than 3 seconds, the chances of your user hitting the back button are very high. The lower the page load the higher the engagement. In the fast track world with millions of options, if a user has to wait for your page being loaded, then either you should be giving your products free or the info you provide is exclusive.

Decreased Bounce Rate

The longer it takes to load a page to your website, the higher the bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors landed on your website but left without actually visiting any pages. The bounce rate is 4th most important ranking factor on SERPs. A ‘good’ bounce rate is different for every website depending on the industry they belong to. For example, the bounces rate is higher for the service industry than the product industry.

Less Cart Abandonment

With increased page speed there will be less cart abandonment
Speed is a very crucial factor for the success of any e-commerce website because this is a product-based industry. The speedy the checkout process the higher the conversion rate. Rather than having a 5 steps conventional check-out process, develop a single-step checkout process, where all the necessary information is gathered on a single page. Keep additional information as optional. Ecommerce websites need to be extra careful with their product page load times.

Benefit in SEO

page speed is an important aspect of SEO
Page speed is so important for SEO that Google has actually made it a ranking factor in its search algorithm. The comparison of page speed for different sites depends also on the browser, device, and location. In the eyes of SEO, the ideal page load time is 7 secs for payment pages and 3 seconds for standard pages. If you are wondering that despite beautiful websites and attractive content why you are not ranking, then this could be your answer.

User Satisfaction

user satification increases with page speed optimization
User satisfaction is the most important outcome of the page speed optimization process. If your website is properly optimized to enhance user experience than it engages users and gives them a rich experience while they are on site. Fast page speed is an important aspect of user experience design. This also depends on how well you have designed a site map for your website. A site map is also a contributing factor for SEO and performance optimization.

There are many factors contributing to page load time for a website like a server response time, image compression, HTML and CSS structure, Cache, the weight of theme and plugins, and external embedded media. Though server response time is not in our control, other factors can be optimized to increase page speed. If you are looking to lower the bounce rate and increase conversion, you should get a website audit and start working on optimizing the page speed. This is not a one-time practice. There need to be constant efforts to optimize the page speed, on a regular basis.

BLive Web Solutions provides speed optimization services for all kind of websites and especially for WordPress website. You can get a free website audit and see if you require or speed optimization service.

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