Does the speed of your website really matter?
The latest fads, what's the colour, how many pictures should I use? There is a lot to consider when it comes to website design. Unfortunately, most people spend far too much time focusing on the aesthetics. At WhiteStar, we believe that you need to have a beautiful website. But we place just as much emphasis on ensuring it will work brilliantly too. The prettiest website in the world is still worth nothing if it's littered with functional errors.
One of the most important factors for people when visiting a website seems to be one of the last things people ask us about when building it: and that is speed. You wouldn't think much of a website that takes 10 seconds to load, so why is speed not on your must-have list when finding a website design agency?
If you've never considered just how important a fast website is, here is our ultimate guide.
Ranking
Google is known for frequently making changes to the criteria for how it ranks websites. Whereas it used to focus on interest and engagement, at the moment it's definitely transitioning towards the whole customer experience. This means that Google is now using page loading as a factor when ranking websites. If your website is too slow, it will have a much larger impact now.
Impatience
Our modern world is undoubtedly more demanding than ever before. We want everything, we want it now and we want to access it in the most convenient way possible. Users do not want to wait for your site to load. Unless you are offering the most incredible discount or new product that people would be crazy enough to queue up for, your customers will accept nothing less than instant. It might seem ridiculous, but it's true.
A modern day internet user will vote with their feet (or finger in this case), and they won't hesitate to go to one of the other thousands of sites that came up in their search if yours doesn't open instantly. We simply don't have the time to wait. And even if we do have the time, why should we wait? There is no need for slow in the 2020s.
But how slow is slow? Well, there is a perceived wisdom that three seconds is too long to wait for a page to load. Research by Kissmetrics revealed that 40% of people abandon a site completely if it takes more than three seconds to load. That could be 40% of people who may have bought from you. They could be genuine customers. Just three seconds could be the difference between 40% more turnover or not. When you say it like that, why isn't speed further up the must-have list when people are searching for a new website designer?
Mobile users
With a staggering 92.1% of internet users accessing the internet via a mobile phone, according to Exploding Topics, it means that speed is now especially important on mobile devices. Your desktop/laptop may respond snappily when it's linked to your lovely 5G home network. But mobile devices may be using a poor mobile data connection or a slow public WiFi link. That snappy response slows to a sluggish crawl.
Worse still, what if your site is even slow on a powerful PC on a fast broadband service? Imagine how slow it will be on an iPhone X on a one-bar 4G connection. It's all amplified.
In conclusion
In today's world of infinite choices, there's no denying that it's hard to build brand loyalty, so we have to use every asset we've got to optimise your customer's experience. Next time you're thinking about what your website looks like, don't forget to also consider the whole customer journey, including the response speed. What is it really like to visit your website, and how satisfied are your customers going to really be?
There should be no need to sacrifice anything in web design. Your website should be beautiful and speedy on every device. If you're not getting both of these things, talk to WhiteStar and let us explore how we can help.