Us humans are impatient. We don’t like delays and we get restless when we don’t get what we want, when we want it. Simply put: we hate waiting. The communication industry is very aware of this. They continuously advertise for fast 4G and fiber. And with good reason. There are plenty of statistics showing how our behavior change when getting impatient. We are afraid to make you wait any longer, so here are 4 reasons why you need to have a fast website:
1 – People Have A Short Attention Span
Goldfish have a short-term memory of 9 seconds, while us humans have a short-term memory of 8 seconds (survey, 2013). The basis of this comparison is beside the point, but if your website takes more than 8 seconds to load, you are playing a risky game with your potential customers. Many of them have already clicked the return button and found a different website. People are so impatient that they will go to your competitor if they experience any performance issues with your website.
Read more about why you should care about your mobile page speed.
2 – A Fast Website Increases Engagement
If you are an urbanite visiting the countryside, you have probably noticed that the speed of communication is not like in the city. Some people (not naming names) might even be annoyed by it!
Aberdeen Group has found that:
- A website which takes more than 3 seconds to load have:
22% fewer page views
50% higher bounce rate
than a page that takes 1 second to load
- A website which takes more than 5 seconds to load have:
35% fewer page views
105% higher bounce rate
than a page that takes 1 second to load
- A website which takes more than 10 seconds to load have:
46% fewer page views
135% higher bounce rate
than a page that takes 1 second to load
3 – Customers Don’t Come Back
You have customers who come and return, and you have customers who come and never come back. And we prefer the customer who returns over and over and over again…
Both Microsoft and Google report the same:
8 out of 10 people do not come back to a slow website.
4 – Google Penalise Slow Websites
Google will do like most other businesses when it comes to keeping its customers: everything. When you do a Google search, Google wants you to find what you are looking for. And they want you to find it fast.
That’s why they punish slow…or maybe a more correct way of saying this is: that’s why they reward fast loading websites, by ranking them higher in the search result. And everyone knows what a high ranking in Google means: more traffic to your website, more customers, more money in your pocket, longer holidays, fancier dinners…
Read more about how website speed can impact your search ranking here.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and remember that the most efficient changes are the ones that are usually the easiest and cheapest to make. How about you make a goal for the year: improve your website performance. And let us know if you want some help to really speed it up.
Do you want to know exactly how fast your website is and what you can do to improve? Click here to find out.
