Website Speed – Three reasons why a fast loading website is vital for your business.

byNick Burrage/October 17, 2022/inDigital Marketing

Your latest website speed test result may not be top of the agenda at your company board meetings but it really is a key number that every business leader should be tracking – it can make a huge difference to your end of year financials and this article will explain how.

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Website speed is the one thing we’ve seen people tell fibs about.

A digital agency approaches a client and wants to win their business but knows that telling the client the truth about website speed may endanger that. If they explain that the prospective client’s website speed is too slow and it needs a rebuild the client may shy away from the expense and choose someone else.

The results will never be very good with a slow website

No matter how clever your SEO or how much you spend on PPC ads, a slow site at the heart of the programme will always be a let down. It will upset prospective clients, upset Google and make your business or charity look bad.

Firstly, get an independent test done, free.

It is tempting to sit at your desk, bring up your own website and think: well that was pretty fast, all is well.

It may not be.

For one thing your site is very likely to be cached on your own machine so you are getting a completely different picture of your website speed to any other person using it. You should also remember that other visitors may be out and about viewing your site on a mobile phone from a train or golf course – a very different situation in internet speed terms!

Get a Website Speed test

Website speed tests are available free of charge and while there are many available, you’ll probably want to use Google’s own version. After all, they are the ones judging your site.

It can be frustrating when their results are quite different to your experience but remember they are trying to capture a range of internet connections and the rumour is that they test over a 3G speed!

GET A GOOGLE SPEED TEST

Reason 1: Website Speed is a reflection on your brand.

We are all getting more impatient. And apparently that is the fault of the internet. We’ve all given up on a site that doesn’t load quickly enough, haven’t we? Perhaps almost worse, we’ve all started out on a web exploration of a company slightly irritated by the weird delay in their site loading. It reflects badly on them as an organisation even if it doesn’t lose us completely.

Reason 2: Google will punish you

We’ve seen this happen very often and indeed Google have unusually openly admitted that site speed is a key ranking factor: Slow sites are pushed down the rankings and their owners will pay up to 400% more for the same ads than their faster competitors.

We won’t get bogged down in technical detail such as LCP ( Largest Contentful Paint) but suffice it to say that as a business owner or marketer you should regularly check your site speed and then get expert help in correcting any issues you find.

Reason 3: Better Website speed means more sales

For a pure eCommerce site the effect of a slow site can be felt directly in the bottom line of the business. Check out this brilliant infographic from Neil Patel, the SEO guru.

The key thing to consider is the calculation that a 1 second delay could decrease conversion by 7%. For a site doing £5000 a day in revenue that could mean £127,750 less business over a year. Ouch.

Website speed can deteriorate overtime: Keep watching!

Website Speed tests may vary even when nothing changes on the site. So don’t panic if you get different results for the same site. That said it is very common for a site which is having regular content updates, new functions added or images uploaded to slow down dramatically. A tiny error in a line of code or the accidental upload of a large image can cause problems. So make a diary note to check your site once a month.

Our team are ready to help

If you are unhappy with your site speed – i.e. you are not in the green on Google Speed test page then get in touch with the team here. We’re used to fixing speed issues which can sometimes be something incredible simple to remedy.

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