The overall experience of using your website is largely dependent upon your design and the ability to display your pages and page components quickly. No one wants to wait and attention spans are dwindling. By ensuring that your site is both intuitive and responsive, the risk of losing visitors is minimized while the impact and impression conveyed is one of lasting satisfaction, guaranteeing traffic well-into the future. There are certain aspects of design and configuration which any website speed optimization needs to attend to.
Website speed is one of the important factors which directly imapct on your conversion and revenue, that’s the reason Google has announced to make it (Core Web Vitals) the ranking factor as well. Google is also going to rolling out the Page Experice udpate in the mid-June, 2021.
So get ready before this udpate!
Here I have listed the most common WordPress site speed factors and how they affect your presence online:
Page Load Time & The Human Attention Span
The human attention span appears to be on a steady decrease. As the amount of influences and external stimuli increase, people are less and less likely to have their attention drawn to one thing for a prolonged period of time. In the year 2000, the average person had a twelve second attention span. Today it has been measured at just eight seconds, which is just one second lower than a goldfish. It is no wonder than the slightest delay in your page load time results in no less than a seven percent chance of a loss of conversion. The faster your site, the better the overall user experience, if due to nothing more than keeping their attention.
Improve Your Page Load Time & Improve Your Conversions
Many studies confirm the correlation between page load time and conversion rate. A study of thirty-three retailers across the US showed that once page load time decreased from eight seconds to two seconds, there was a 74% increase in conversions. Given that the US has an average page load time for major retailers of 6.9 seconds, there is certainly ample room to capitalize on this fact. Good website speed optimization will not only reduce your page load time by means of operations in the backend, but your on-page elements will also be streamlined and focussed towards upping your conversion rate.
Search Rankings and Page Load Time
WordPress site speed affects not only your page access time and the overall usability of your site, but it also impacts your search rankings. While your page load time does not currently have as greater effect on your rankings as other aspects of SEO, over the coming months it will begin to be factored in more and more. Google has been using your speed as a ranking factor since 2010, and since 2017 the speed of mobile pages has also been included in rankings. And now Google has officially announded the page experiecne and Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor.
The Importance of Page Speed to Mobile Users
In many areas of the world, mobile users far outnumber desktop browsers. In countries such as Egypt, India and South Africa, more than 50% of browsers are mobile-only users, while in first-world countries the number of mobile users is projected to steadily rise to higher than there are conventional desktop browsers.
In the first quarter of 2015 there was 31.16% webiste traffic from mobile devices, now in first quarter of 2021 it has increased to 54.8%.
Given the higher latency of mobile connections (on average), it is becoming increasingly important to optimize your site for a mobile audience. Speed becomes an integral factor in gaining and holding users.
The Effect of Page Load Time on Your Bounce Rate
Your WordPress site speed has a great effect on your bounce rate. Research undertaken by Google shows that when your page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, there is a 32% higher chance of a bounce. From 1 second to 5 seconds, the chance of a user bouncing skyrockets to 90%. A completely under optimized site with a page load time of ten seconds has a bounce rate of 123%. It is therefore critical to employ website speed optimization to ensure that you aren’t losing visitors simply due to something as trivial as an optimization issue. Independent research confirms these numbers, with a leading web performance engineer at Google (ex employee), Ilya Grigorik, determining that every second in page load time increases your bounce rate by a minimum of .65%. That alone is far too much and completely unnecessary.
How a Fast Page Load Time Improves Customer Retention
Successful ecommerce hinges on a fast, well-optimized framework to grant great customer retention rates and the delivery of well optimized, highly targeted ads. KISSmetrics has revealed some rather interesting statistics regarding shopping behaviour. Their research shows that 47% of all customers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, while 40% of all customers will abandon your site completely if it takes more than three seconds to load. Poor page load time will deter 79% off all shoppers from returning to buy from the same site again, proving that your WordPress site speed is imperative to holding and growing a customer base.
Google’s Page Speed Reporting Tool – A Basic Analysis
Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a fantastic tool which gives you a good indication of your state of optimization. Yet you can’t take your PageSpeed Insight score at face value, there are multiple factors to be considered which are not monitored and reported on in their entirety. One should of course begin by addressing the primary factors listed by Google’s invaluable tool, while other optimizations such as content caching, the use of a content delivery network (CDN), minimizing third-party content and lowering the amount of blocking requests are steps which only professionals and advanced end-users will begin to implement.
WordPress Site Speed – Query Response Improvements
When you employ website speed optimization, your site will undergo optimization of its database alongside many other adjustments. This in turn improves the responsiveness of queries on your site as well as decreasing page load time. Thanks to having less links cluttering your sitemap, search indexing services will be able to crawl you more efficiently. Your content will be found easier and have a better page rank.
Enhance The Entire User Experience & Elevate Your Success
When you take the time to implement website speed optimization services, you are not only improving one aspect of your site, but rather enriching the entire user experience. Your WordPress site speed is the number one underlying factor behind building and growing a successful online presence. Countless research has been carried out which serves as a major advantage to anyone crafting the perfect site. Use the insights of others to structure your site as an asset to the online community, while sealing your own success at the same time.
