Proper web and mobile performance is a crucial factor in search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience. It is important to optimize your web and mobile pages for the best possible load time so that your visitors will be able to access your content easily. Poor performance is far more than just annoyance to your end user. It affects your bounce rate and reduces conversions – which means it is literally costing you money.
It’s critical that you learn how to optimize your websites for speed. A well-optimized site will load quicker than an optimized one. However, reading through the performance section of each page on your site can give you a sense of what is working and what isn’t. And while there is no complete “one size fits all” solution, here are some tips to keep in mind:
The Cost of Poor Mobile Performance
Refusing To Wait
In this day in age of instant gratification, people are getting impatient. They simply refuse to wait – especially online. In a brick and mortar store, customers will wait no longer than 15 minutes in line, but online, 47% of users expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. 57% will leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Overall, 52% of online shoppers related quick page loads to the quality of the brand. This means that a one second increase in page load time will result in a 7% drop in conversion rate, 11% drop in page views, and a 16% drop in customer satisfaction. An easy way to test your speed is using Pingdom and see where you land (hint: if you use a caching service or CDN, it might be better to try it 2-3 times so it can grab a cached version)
Monetary Consequences of Poor Mobile Performance
When Amazon went down in 2013, they lost $66,240 per minute and their previous outage in June 2008 cost them nearly $31,000 per minute. When Facebook went down for 40 minutes in September 2015, their stock declined by 4%. This doesn’t even figure in the cost of brand loyalty and/or negative branding. Best Buy Canada went down on Black Friday in 2014, which caused a huge social media backlash. For a typical company, this kind of negative response can cost over $4 million per year for a typical company!
Mobile By The Numbers
Since over 51% of the traffic on e-commerce websites are from mobile devices, and 32% of offline sales are influenced by research done on mobile devices, it’s clear that mobile holds an incredible influence over shopping online. However, 42% of mobile users were frustrated by slow mobile load times and 63% said that they would no longer do business with a company after having transaction problems on their mobile device. Those are pretty convincing numbers and should be a wake up call to any business that has a stake in selling online.
Looking Ahead
$4 trillion worth of merchandise will be abandoned in online carts this year, but about 63% of that is potentially recoverable by online retailers who put an emphasis on their customers’ user experience. When it comes to performance, regardless of desktop or mobile, don’t let your business suffer due to a slow website or app. Constantly analyze, optimize, and improve performance and watch your sales soar.
These are just four very high-level tips for improving your page speed and don’t even begin to scratch the surface of each. If you own a business and are struggling with building an engaging website, needing a fresh new site, or just wanting some new ideas to help drive leads, let’s touch base! We would love to help your business with your challenges!
