If your website isn't drawing conversions despite strong advertising, good SEO, and worthwhile content, it can be hard to tell what's wrong.
In many cases, the issue lies in website speed. The speed of your website is an important element of SEO as well as the user experience. When load times underperform, the entire website is bound to underperform as well.
Why Website Speed Matters
Consistently high website speed is a vital element of a successful website, for technical as well as user-friendliness reasons. Even delays that might seem minor become chores to slog through after enough repetition.
User Experience
When you get a visitor to your website, you want them to explore and view as many pages as possible. A user may load dozens of web pages in a single visit to some websites, and unseemly load times interrupt the experience.
Excellent content on a slow website is the digital equivalent of a delicious meal on a dirty dish. Overall, it should come as no surprise that guests will leave your website for another if your pages load slowly.
Website Speed Affects SEO
Poor page loading speed hurts your SEO in a number of ways.
For one, Google directly penalizes websites that load poorly while rewarding those that load quickly. Additionally, there are many user-based metrics that play a pivotal role in search engine optimization.
The time that visitors spend on your website, the number of pages and other SEO factors go down when your website speed is poor. If you want your website to draw traffic, it needs to load quickly.
Good Website Speed is Key to Success
Ultimately, slow websites don't draw traffic and convert.
The bottom line to web development is that a website must load quickly or it won't contribute nearly as much to your business as it might otherwise. However, checking your website speed is surprisingly easy. It's a simple matter of seeking out a website speed test service online, at which point you'll know if your website is too slow.
But how slow is too slow?
According to Google, 53% of mobile users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
How to Check Website Speed
You can check how quickly your web pages load by selecting your preferred website speed test service, such as Google Pagespeed Insights or GTMetrix.
Google Pagespeed Insights
Using Google Pagespeed Insights is both easy and helpful. You use it by inserting a link to the website you want to test, at which point the program begins testing.
After a few moments, the test will end and you'll have data on the speed of your web page.
One particularly useful element of this program is that it provides information on different platforms, since a website may load quickly on desktops and slowly on mobile.
The majority of web searches now occur from mobile devices, so data on mobile optimization is essential to running a successful website.
Finally, Pagespeed Insights doesn't just provide raw data on the speed of your website. The program also provides users with actionable guidance on improving the speed of your website.
GTMetrix
If you use GTMetrix, you'll see that it works the same way as Google Insights. However, the way it provides information is different.
Some aspects of GTMetrix are less in-depth, but it also has a cleaner, more visual orientation. Both are good, and since they're free, there's no reason not to use both.
How to Speed Up Websites
Once you've tested the speed of your website, you'll see a variety of recommendations on improving web page speed. Some elements of page loading speed are intuitive and easy to understand, such as page size.
On the other hand, recommendations such as "modernize images to display in nextgen format" will sound impenetrable to many. While it sounds complicated, it simply means to replace JPEG and PNG format images with modern formats such as WebP.
Anyone can utilize the recommendations from a website speed test to improve their web page speed somewhat. If you're looking to optimize speed for your website, you'll want to turn to a professional web developer.
Agency Jet Can Speed Up Your Website
Your website is your number one employee. It works 24/7 to draw new leads, advertise your business, and sell customers on the value you have to offer.
If your website is running slowly, then you have a lazy employee who's jeopardizing your business.
Turn to Agency Jet so we can revamp your website, improve page loading speed, and help you build a website that converts.
In addition to web development services, we offer a free assessment of your company site for completely free.
During your Agency Jet assessment, you'll receive information on page loading speed, mobile-friendliness, and other key benchmarks that make for a successful business. This process is purely educational, and you can choose to hire our services or not afterward. Don't wait, give us a call and arrange an assessment for your website today.
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