How Page Load Time Affects Revenue
Page load time has been something Google looks at for ranking purposes, but now there's more urgency with the latest announcement from the search engine. I'm going to talk a little bit about why it's bad for our users, and a nifty little tool from Google that can show you how much lost revenue you may encounter due to slow loading web sites!
Pretty much every single site has some page speed loading time issues. The good news is these problems are fixable, but unless you're a savvy, experienced web developer who's done a lot of sites, particularly mobile-friendly sites, you may not want to go through the learning curve to do this yourself.
Why Is Page Load Time Such An Issue?
It's all about user experience. We all want pages to load quickly, because we have no patience to wait around for a site to finally show up on our devices, particularly smart phones and tablets.
Think about your own reaction - after a certain time period, you're going to abandon the site, aren't you? Well, your prospects are no different!
Thus, the need for speed, as we like to say, has become one of the most prevalent technical issues that hinder indexing and ranking for pages and posts. The good news is that since this on your site, it's low-hanging fruit that you can task your developer to fix, and once these page speed load issues are resolved, your web readers can immediately get a far better experience navigating your site!
How Page Load Time Causes You To Lose Money
You've probably figured out by now that if your site is running slow, and people are bailing out because they're tired of waiting for pages to load, you're losing potential customers and revenue.
Google has a neat little tool that can show you exactly how much you're losing with a new application called "Winning On Mobile."
With a little bit of homework (maybe 10 minutes!), you can set up this application and see how much money you're potentially losing based on different page speed load times.
The first thing you do when you click on the link above is to enter your domain or even a specific page that impacts your company's revenue.
You should also go into Google Analytics and see how many visitors are looking at your site on a mobile device or tablet vs. a desktop or laptop:
Next, if you have enabled e-commerce tracking on Google Analytics, hop on over there and get a few pieces of data. If not, enter some estimates and see how much money you could be making!
I'm not going to include every single screen shot, but when you are on the tool page, you can step through different page load times, and see how revenue can be increased as the page load faster.
Now that you know a little bit more about how page load time affects your revenue, why not do this little test and make plans with your web developer to prioritize your most important web pages to improve their page load times?
Want to learn more about doing on page and off page SEO? Let's get together for a customized, private training class soon!
Until we meet again, stay safely between the ditches!
All the very best to you,
Nancy McDonald
Image courtesy of Pixnio
Screenshots courtesy of author March 2018
