Anyone can start an e-commerce store or online business. It’s never been easier. Content Management Systems like WordPress and e-commerce solutions like Shopify have drag and drop interfaces, plugins and integrated payment applications. You don’t need any technical experience to build a fully functioning website that is attractive and SEO optimized all in one fell swoop. However, all of this effort will be for nothing if your customers are driven away by slow page loading speeds.
A successful e-business is heavily dependent on its hosting service. Customers don’t want to wait five minutes for a page to load. They lead busy lives and have better things to do. We all know how irritating it is when a website hangs for ages refusing to load or open. In most cases, we click away and look for a different resource.
Research suggests that most people click away after five seconds. That’s right – a staggering one third of online shoppers will leave a website if pages load too slowly. Faster internet speeds have accustomed us to quicker load times. The problem is even worse if you are reliant on mobile customers; they are even more impatient!
Speed Matters to Customers
Each time your website doesn’t load fast enough, you lose a customer. When you put the problem in such stark terms, it’s not difficult to see how this affects your bottom line. Moreover, it’s not just sales that take a massive hit.
Slow Page Loading and SEO
Poor page loading speeds affect SEO. Google is focused on providing a positive customer experience, so it pays attention to slow loading websites. None of us knows how the Google ranking algorithm works, but we do know that slow page load times negatively affect a website’s position in the search rankings.
Every business wants to be on page one of the search results for specific search terms. Anything less than page one is considered a failure as you would only attract 20% of the available audience. Website design does play a part in how well you rank, but site performance is also critical.
Google Speed Check
It’s a good idea to test your site performance using Google’s handy tool. If you score 85/100 or higher, you have nothing to worry about, but any less than that and it is time you sorted the problem out. By the way, if you have a mobile site as well as a desktop site, check both, as a poor performance on one will drag the other down.
Fixing Poor Page Load Speeds
There are many reasons why pages don’t load quickly. Check your website design and streamline it as much as possible. Large files and buggy scripts can all slow a website down. You should also check your website host as you might need greater bandwidth your website. It might even be worth moving to a new host – a Bluehost promo code will save you money.
Don’t ignore page-loading problems. Faster speeds mean more customers, which in turn boost sales and helps the business to grow. In the end, this is all that matters.
