According to SME News, Amazon reported that for every 100 milliseconds they speed up their website, they see a 1% increase in revenue. So, if you’re looking for a way to increase website speed so you can increase your revenue and website traffic, then you’ve come to the right place.
We know that having a fast-loading site is important and we want to help you achieve this goal. After all, if your website isn’t loading quickly enough, not only are you missing out on the increase of revenue, but it can also affect your search engine rankings and even cause you to lose customers. That’s why we’ve put together some helpful tips on how to improve your site’s load time in order to keep visitors happy and boost conversions.
You’ll learn about the benefits of faster sites as well as what causes slow load times so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not upgrading web hosting is right for you. Now let’s get look at some data-driven reasons to increase your website’s speed and upgrade your host!
Website Speed and Why It’s Important
First things first, the importance of website speed. According to MOZ (a leader in digital marketing and SEO), “web page load time is a measurement of how fast the content on your web page loads.”
It takes into account not only how long it takes for all elements on your site to display properly such as your text, any kind of forms, images, and videos, and basically anything else on your front end page. This also includes factors like browser rendering and DNS lookup times.
Increasing your websites speed is going to:
- Increase your engagement
- Increase sales and conversions
- Decrease bounce rate
- Improve SEO
- Rank higher than your competitors
- A better experience for customers
Basically, it’s how long it takes for everything on your site – from images to video files – to show up in front of visitors. If you don’t have an idea about what that means or why this matters then let us explain some data-driven reasons why having a slow loading website can hurt both conversions and SEO rankings:
Why Having a Slow Website Speed Hurts Your Business
It Hurts Conversions: According to data from KISSmetrics, users expect pages to load on mobile devices within five seconds. If they don’t get their content quickly enough, you’ll end up losing them and increasing your website’s bounce rate.
If that isn’t enough, this data also shows that a 1-second delay in your page’s response could result in a 7% reduction of your conversions. If you don’t think 7% sounds that big, think of it this way.
If your website brings in an average of $100,000 a day in sales, you could potentially be losing an average of $2.5 million in sales every single year.
What Speeds Should Your Website Have
So what is considered a fast-loading website? Well, Google has taken steps to make their ranking algorithms more strict and many other search engines have followed suit. This means that it’s even more important than ever before for sites to load quickly or risk losing out on potential customers and sales opportunities.
As we mentioned, you could be losing quite a bit in sales, but a slow-loading website can also hurt you because of SEO. If Google and other search engines crawl your website and find that it’s slow, they won’t rank you high and let your competitor’s faster websites show first.
Typically, your site should be able to load in two or three seconds if you’re looking at an eCommerce site and three or four seconds if not.
Mobile VS. Desktop Load Times
You’ll also need to think about your website speed on both desktop and mobile. With about half of the world’s internet users now browsing on their mobile devices rather than on desktops, it’s important to optimize your site for those customers as well.
With so many people now on mobile, it’s going to be critical for your mobile site to be just as fast if not fast as your desktop version.
What is Slowing Down Your Website’s Speed
Now that you understand the importance of page loading speed and the basics of what going into a page’s load times, let’s dive in a bit deeper. We’re going to look at each individual factor that is slowing down your website.
Your Webhost
If you’ve ever had issues with your website loading slowly, it’s very likely because of the hosting company that you’re using. The web host is where all of your content (your photos, videos, and text) lives this includes your website as a whole – like a warehouse for this information.
When someone visits your site, they are requesting to see a page, one or more files from the server which could be images/videos or even just plain text; if any part of these requests takes too long due to slow servers then people will have difficulty finding what they need quickly enough to keep them on your page.
This is why it’s so important to find how what the best web hosting company to work with so that you don’t experience something like a slow website. For you and your customers!
Your Uptime
No, we’re not talking about us in this section. Have you ever had or gone to a website that is completely down and unviewable? That’s because of their web host Uptime. Uptime is the time that your website is up and not down for technical errors due to web hosting.
It’s important to choose a hosting company that guarantees at least 99.90% uptime, but you’ll want to shoot for 100%.
If your site goes down too often then people won’t trust it and will go elsewhere which is going to hurt your loyal customs and new traffic.
To make sure your service provides the best possible uptime – ask them for their percent of uptime guarantee or how many days they’ve been able to keep the server online without any problems.
Your Plugins
Plugins can be great for adding functionality to your site, but if you have too many of them then it’s going to slow down the loading time of both mobile and desktop versions.
If you’re not sure which plugins to keep or ditch, look into those that are specifically designed with page speed optimization in mind. They may even give you some insight on other areas where they believe there is room for improvement!
The Servers
You want to make sure that you choose a web host with servers fast enough to support your website. The servers are going to play an important role in ensuring that your page loading speed is fast!
Not all hosting companies are the same when it comes down to performance and speed so be sure to do some research in order to figure out which one will have the best possible results for page loading speeds. The more powerful your server is – the faster load times you’ll see.
The Files
If your website is slow then it might be due to the number of files that are on each page. You want to only use files that are small or files that you can compress.
When it comes to images and videos, always make sure that you use a file compressor so that you don’t overwhelm your website and services with these massive files.
How to Increase Website Speed
By now, you might have a good idea of how we are going to increase your website’s speed and decrease bounce rates on your website. Simply by taking everything we talked about above and improving on it!
So we need to improve your:
- Webhosting
- Uptime
- Plugins
- Servers
- Files
Improving Your Webhosting, Uptime, and Servers
Have you ever heard the expression, “kill two birds with one stone”? Well, luckily for you, we can improve these 3 with one simple move! By working with the right web hosting company you can improve Your Webhosting, Uptime, and Servers all at once.
Remember that your website is only as good as its weakest link so make sure to upgrade to the right web hosting in order to get the best performance possible!
How do we start this process? It starts by choosing a reliable host for your website. A company that puts their customers first and offers a variety of top-notch services such as:
- Has no contracts
- cPanel hosting
- WordPress hosting
- Secure payments
- Locked-in prices
- No hidden fees
- Complete control
With services such as these, you’ll be in good hands to ensure your website loads as it should!
Plugins and Files
Once you have your Webhosting, it’s time to work on the last two things that has an effect on your pages speed times, plugins, and files.
As we mentioned before, you want to keep your files sizes as low as possible. You can do this by simply using a free file compressing tool. Just make sure to run all of your files through this tool before you upload them to your website.
For plugins, you want to keep them to a minimum. Don’t overdo it with too many. With that being said, you can use the WP Super Cache to help with your website’s cache.
Upgrading Your Web Hosting
You should increase website speed so that you can increase user experience, decrease bounce rates, and increase conversion rates. By taking everything you learned in this article, you’ll be able to enhance your website and outperform your competitors.
If you’re ready to upgrade your web hosting, head over to our contact page and send us a message today!