This is a question we get from website owners more often than we feel we should. The short answer is that yes, it’s super important! The long (ish) answer as to why it is so important and how it can be the difference between gaining a customer and losing one is below.
Did you know that 1 in 4 visitors would abandon a website that takes longer than 4 seconds to load? (source) That is a potential 25% of your entire business that you would lose solely down to the speed of your website. This goes to show, it does not matter how wonderful your website is, if your site doesn’t load fast – you are losing business.
On top of this, 64% of shoppers who are not satisfied with their visit will shop somewhere else next time, 46% of users do not return to poorly performing websites and just a 1 second delay reduces customer satisfaction by a whopping 16%. The knock on effect this has on your conversion rate can be astronomical.
As you have probably guessed by now, if you currently have a slow loading website, it’s time to make a change. By doing so you may just skyrocket your sales overnight!
How to check the speed of your website:
Checking your website speed is actually really easy (thankfully!). All you need to do is head over to a site like GTMetrix or Google Pagespeed Insights and input the domain of the page you wish to check. We recommend GTMetrix as it gives you a detailed breakdown of what you need to improve to speed up your website.
Basically, if your results are green your site speed is doing good! However, if you see amber or red, you have got some work to do!
How to improve the speed of your website:
Ok, so we now know we need to improve our site speed but how do you do it? You can head over to our knowledge base and follow our step-by-step tutorial on how to get your website loading at the speed of light, but for now here are some quick tips and tricks you can implement today:
- Choose a reliable web host that values your website speed as much as you do
- Optimize and reduce the size all of the images on your website
- Remove any animations on your site (we know they look cool, but is it worth it?)
- Delete any unused pages, images or blog posts lurking in the backend that you no longer need or use
- Install a caching plugin like WP Super Cache which will help files load faster
- Install and activate WP Rocket which can be used to minimise the script used to build your website (this can break your website, change one thing at a time and backup your website before you start)
PLEASE NOTE: When you are testing your website’s speed, you must check every page. A common mistake is to only focus on the homepage leaving the rest of your site slugging behind.
So, there you have it. Your website speed is arguably the most important factor to consider when building or growing your site and it should never be ignored. Remember to choose a fast and reliable web host as a solid foundation and check your website’s speed regularly to ensure a long lasting online success for your business.
If you already host with WebPower, reach out to our support team to get a free audit of your website performance and some tips on what you can do to improve it. If you do not already host with WebPower, what are you waiting for? Sign up today and try out our ultra speedy hosting.
