Slow Websites Kill Conversions. How Can You Improve Yours?

You want your website to be attractive, and it has to include all the details that your audience needs to choose you over your competitors. But in the process, you just might be killing your conversion rate.

Slow websites can be seriously damaging to achieving your marketing and sales results. They alienate your customers, reduce conversion rates, and damage your performance in search.

In this post, we’ll look at why website speed should be a priority. We’ll talk through the factors that might slow down your site, how you can test site speed, and what steps you can take to optimise your site’s performance.

How A Slow Website Can Kill Your Conversion Rates

Website speed matters, more than ever. No matter your industry, your audience doesn’t have time to wait around, and search engines don’t want to serve up slow, laggy sites to users. If you don’t pay attention to how fast your website loads, you can fall into a trap that is difficult to get out of.

Many of your website visitors won’t wait around until the page they want actually loads. They just go elsewhere. Those that do wait are more likely to be dissatisfied and are not afraid to share their negative opinions. They’re certainly less likely to become a lead or customer. Study after study shows the same thing:

• According to Sprout Social, 47% of your visitors expect your website to load in two seconds or less. 
• Kissmetrics found that 40% of your visitors will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
• Another study found that a one-second delay in load time results in 11% fewer page views and 7% fewer conversions.
• eCommerce giant Amazon believes that every second in load time costs them about $1.6 billion in annual revenue.
• 40% of visitors who had a bad website experience will tell others about it. The slow load speed effect amplifies.
• Page load speed is a significant SEO factor. Slow websites, in other words, will not rank as highly as those that load faster. This is becoming even more important, with the introduction of Core Web Vitals as key ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, due in March 2021.

Plenty of page load speed case studies have uncovered the same basic findings. But they also have a more positive takeaway: cut down your loading speed, and your page views, conversions, and customers begin to increase at about the same rates.  

9 Factors That Can Slow Down Your Website

We know that slow websites are damaging to your entire business. Study after study reinforces that point. But what, exactly, can slow down your website to your point where you’re hurting your leads and conversions? Start with these 9 factors, which all play a major role in the process.

1. Uncompressed images – Up to 90% of your page size can be due to images. Make sure they’re only as big as they need to be to display clearly, and use proper image compression.
2. Bloated code – As your website grows, so does your code. But most websites never clean up and minimize their existing code, which swells over time. Check your HTML, CSS and JavaScript for code that still loads but is no longer needed, and look into minimisation, as this can have a dramatic effect on speed.
3. Bad hosting – No tip works if your server doesn’t allow fast website load times. Upgrade to a premium host or dedicated server.
4. No caching – Browser caching means storing certain elements of your site in your users’ browser so they don’t have to load from scratch. It’s vital for complex sites with images and other media, so make sure you’re using caching.
5. Too many redirects – Every time an old page has to point to a new one, it takes a little longer to load. Streamline your sitemap to reduce redirects as much as possible. Many tools, such as ScreamingFrog, can help you to identify your redirects and any redirect loops you have. 
6. No content distribution network – CDNs store your site in multiple locations, pulling up the version closest to your visitors to make access faster and more reliable.  
7. Too many plugins – Consider this a cousin of bloated code. Program your website from the bottom up, instead of trying to layer in multiple third-party plugins that muddle up the backend.
8. An outdated CMS – Don’t rely on that CMS that worked 5 or 6 years ago. Newer versions of the software tend to better keep up with loading speeds and user speed expectations.
9. User limitations – We’d be remiss not to mention the fact that your users’ internet speed also slows loading speed. Unfortunately, we can’t change that, but we can create sites optimised for speed, which won’t compound the issue.

How To Test Your Website Speed

Each of the above factors requires a different remedy that ultimately results in a site-wide emphasis to improve your website/page loading speeds. To get there, you first have to determine exactly what it is that is slowing your site down.

Let’s start with Google’s own tool, PageSpeed Insights. Enter your website’s URL, and let the search engine giant go to work. After spending a few seconds to analyze your site, it will provide you with a speed score between 0 and 100, for both desktop and mobile. It also comes with a wide range of recommendations that, if followed, can improve your speed score.

Don’t neglect your load times on mobile, as for some time now Google’s indexing for search has been mobile first. 

Another option to test your website’s speed is GTmetrix. It works in a similar fashion to PageSpeed Insights, and offers its own speed scoring, but gets more in-depth on a number of performance indicators. GTmetrix ranks those indicators on an A through F grading scale and adds priority levels to help you determine which issues you need to tackle first.

Both of these tools are available to anyone, but you can also get more in-depth insights through a partnership with Impact. Our healthcheck provides you with a detailed overview of where your site succeeds, and where it needs improvement. Then we can work with you on the next steps.

How Can You Speed Up Your Website and Improve Your Conversion Rate?

This one is simple: follow the recommendations. Check off each of the factors above to reduce potential problems. Use a website speed checker to determine where you stand, then look for solutions to the suggestions offered in those tools.

Of course, that ‘simple’ process can get quite complicated. Many of the necessary steps require in-depth expertise. If your website is slower than average, you need to find a partner that can help you get there.

Let’s work together to make sure that happens. At Impact we’re obsessed with site speed. Whether we help you build a site from scratch, you have one of our WordPress Support & Maintenance plans, or we run a healthcheck for you to determine the improvements your site needs, we can get you to the point you need to be.

Don’t let a slow website stand in your way of attracting customers. Let’s work together to ensure that your page load times become an asset and competitive advantage, not a hindrance in helping your business grow.