This is why you need a fast website

Your website performance has a large, measurable effect on conversion rates. This means that the quicker your website loads, the more likely the user will perform the desired action.

Improving your load time by only 0.1s can boost conversion rates by 8%. Now imagine what will happen to your conversion rate if load times are extended to several seconds...

My own expectation of page speed has evolved through time. While I 10 years ago was happy waiting a couple of seconds, I now expect loading times less than a second. There is nothing worse than visiting a sluggish website or service.

Aim for less than 1 second load time

It is not only me being picky about it; studies show that when a page loads in less than 1 second, the average conversion rate is almost 32%. At a 1-second load time, the conversion rate drops to 20%, and at the 2-second mark, the conversion rate is leveling off at around 12-14%.

This goes to show that page speed makes a great impact on your conversion rate and online business, probably even more than you think. When was the last time you check our own website page speed?

A great design is not enough to please your visitors and convince them to purchase your product. Customers nowadays want a fast and smooth customer experience.

Ok, let's fix this - Where do I start?

First of all, you need to check your website page speed. This is the easy part and is done within a couple of minutes.

If you use Google Chrome as your browser, you can just run Lighthouse from the Chrome DevTools.

First of all, navigate to the website you want to test, then open DevTools by right-clicking and choose "inspect." Then click on the tab "Lighthouse."

Click on the button that says "generate report". Wait a few seconds, and you will be presented with your test results.

What's next?

When the report is ready, you should look at the performance metric. If your performance score is below 90, and the first contentful paint is above 1,5 seconds, you need to take action.

Within the performance report, you will get a list of opportunities for bettering your score. Improve as many of them as you can, and re-run the test.

Do I need a new website?  

If your website is a few years old, you might want to change to newer technology. This depends, though. It's not all old sites that are bad performing.

But there is no doubt that a faster website will result in more conversions.

If you need help optimizing your current website or want a brand new one - you can read more about our work here or contact us.