It makes sense that you want your blog or e-commerce site to go as fast as it can. But you also want it to look great. That makes sense, too.
So, you’ve got a stunning design theme with beautiful graphics and images. You’ve also got plugins for email subscriptions and buttons to all your social media.
Where You Started and How You Got Here:
When you first started to get enough traffic to monetize your site, you started slowly with advertising. Then you started doing affiliate ads. The temptation to increase advertising-income is very strong. Perhaps it’s the main reason you launched your site in the first place.
But maybe you’ve noticed that your bounce rate has been increasing. The conversion rate on your own products has been falling. And your search ranking, which you’ve worked so hard to establish and maintain, has fallen.
This scenario is not too uncommon for bloggers and e-commerce sites that are starting to get the kind of traffic and activity on their site that they had always hoped for. The problem is that big, beautiful graphics and images are some of the many things that can affect what is probably the most important aspect of the online world: website performance.
Virtually all of us are impatient when we’re online. So intrinsically, we know our site needs to be fast. But, what are the real-world benefits online bloggers and marketers get from a faster web page load?
What Your Visitors Get and What You Get
Your visitors will have a better experience. This means that they will want to spend more time at your site and they will be more satisfied with the experience. Visitors who have a great experience like to share. And social sharing is the online version of word-of-mouth advertising that is not only effective but free!
An increase in sales conversion is probably the most significant reason to make sure that your website has the world-class performance. And this is in no small part due to improved customer experience. If a sales page takes more than 3 seconds to load, the user has probably clicked away. If it loads quickly, the customer can complete the transaction before they lose patience. And they probably feel better about their purchase.
If your site is slow, people aren’t going to want to stay there, and they probably won’t come back. One of the things that effects page rank is the amount of time a visitor spends on your site. If you have great content, people will want to stay and return. But if your site is slow, we impatient web users will probably decide to find somewhere else to spend our time.
And this gets us back to page rank. Site speed is actually one of the things Google takes into consideration when determining where you rank. But, it’s one of many things. Some of which we’ve talked about already.
Bottom Line
If a visitor has a great experience, they will want to come back, they will share, they will stay, they will buy, they will return, and they will buy again.
These are the primary reasons your website design should be built for speed. To paraphrase an old saying in the context of internet marketing: lack of speed kills.
photo credit: DMCCrd2-136
