Fix Page Load Times to Improve SEO

Website page load times

Find out how your page load time effects your SEO

Slow page load times will equal a loss in business

Webfit Design have worked on plenty of websites in years gone by and noticed a vast majority of them have had a similar problem: slow page load times which are effecting their businesses and SEO.

What is a website load time?

Page load time measures the amount of time it takes for all of the scripts and contents to load on a page for users to view. As soon as the visitor clicks on the page, the clock starts. It ends when all of the scripts, images, fonts and text content is fully loaded. There are tools available to test your website’s current performance. We use tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test or GT Metrix. Once a test is completed, these tools record the calculations of speed and optimisation performance. They also provide tips and recommendations to improve the website’s performance.
Slow page load times webfit design

The impact of slow web pages

A potential visitor can search for information or aim to purchase a service or product within seconds. As an owner of a website, you hope their search inquiry brings them to your web page where they’ll stay. It’s vitally important your website is fully optimised because visitors want to access information quickly without any downtime. Moreover, anything over 3 seconds will deter a potential lead and increase your bounce rate.

A survey from Hubspot analysed websites on its performance and visitor retention. “Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5)”.

  1. “The average mobile web page takes 15.3 seconds to load.” – Google
  2. “Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.”
  3. “As page load time goes from one second to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases 123%.”

To see that article from Hubspot head over to this page

Evidence of the effects of slow pages

There is plenty of evidence to show that a slow website increases bounce rate and frustrates visitors on your site. Furthermore, those unhappy visitors turn to a competitor’s website instead. In the long term this can damage your online reputation and lead to an increase loss in traffic.

Slow page speeds will effect your SEO too. Google have stated that desktop and mobile page speed are massive ranking factors that impact website in its search results. Luckily enough, there are solutions that can fix these issues to help your website load faster in the hope that you can recover lost traffic and bring in new leads.

How to improve site performance

To improve your website speed and performance, Moz recommends the following changes:

  1. Enable compression.
  2. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
  3. Reduce redirects
  4. Remove render-blocking JavaScript
  5. Leverage browser caching
  6. Improve server response time
  7. Use a content distribution network
  8. Optimise images

Closing thoughts

With this list along with a well designed website on desktop and mobile using the best practises you can improve your loads times 10-fold.

If you’re stuck and unsure on how to execute the solutions on the list, send us an email at info@webfitdesign.co.uk. Our development team are experienced and will put you in the right direction to fixing your load times.

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