Why it is important to have a fast website
No matter how big your site is, it has to load fast enough not to make the visitors wait. If it isn't so, your definitely losing a lot of money. Moreover, the site visitors might leave it forever when they see it is slow as a snail.
In the end, you're probably damaging a brand's reputation. It happens because of bad impression that a website creates. When the visitors see the site works bad, they presume the brand also might have some issues.
Actually, the speed of your website is as important as its content. Still, a lot of site owners just don't know what to do when the page is really slow. At the same time, there are plenty of free tools that might help you solve the problem.
How does it influence on profit
Most internet users will leave the site if it loads too slow, especially while surfing randomly. There is also a big chance they'll never come back. It means you'll lose a lot of impressions, which is a disaster for e-commerce sites.
Web-researches can show us how harmful a slow web-page could be. First, 83% of people expect that a page they intend to open will load no more than 3 seconds. Second, 500 most popular e-commerce websites has a 10 seconds average loading time.
If we talk about the users' behavior, slow loading time has a strong influence on their decisions in online shopping. The statistics shows 44% of web surfers will have a negative impression on a company if the page loads too slow. At least 79% of shoppers won't buy from this website ever again. Moreover, 46% of users will share their negative experience with friends and relatives.
Slow web-page damages not only your reputation, it has a bad influence on the whole campaign. If your site isn't fast enough, you'll definitely lose a lot of possible conversions. Then, Google search ranking depends on how fast the website is. A slow page will also have fewer views, so you'll lose a lot of potential audience. At last, people just don't like to wait, especially when it comes to the internet.
Why every second is important
Every piece of information is always more interesting and helpful if it contains concrete numbers. When we talk about the site speed it has a direct influence on your conversion rate and profit. The market research revealed that a single second of loading speed will award you with 7% more conversions. In turn, it will lead to greater revenues.
We can also look on the whole issue from the other side. If your site loads slow, it will generate losses every day of the year, which is a tremendous amount of money in the end. Even a small downtime can cost you thousands of dollars in the long term period. So, it's definitely much better just to solve the little problem with the loading speed.
Here are some examples of losses and additional revenue you might receive:
1. $2555 per year ? this is the cost you'll pay for every second that slows the site with $100 daily revenue.
2. In case the site makes $1000 for the same time period, then total losses per year will reach $25550.
3. If you'll boost the loading speed of the site that gives $100000 per day on 1 second, it'll award you with extra 7000$ each day.
4. Try to improve the speed of the mentioned website on 2 seconds and you'll get additional $426000 per month.
5. In the end, the same site will give you extra $7000000 per year if you'll increase the loading speed on 3 seconds.
Actually, the numbers don't matter so much. It works with the sites of different scales. The faster your website is the more potential it has and the more money you receive.
Real examples from well-known companies
You might think that $100000 per day is something impossible, but there are companies in the market that make the same amount for less than 5 minutes or even for few seconds like on Black Friday. Here are some reports from such market giants concerning their sites speed:
1. Amazon's and Walmart's researches showed they're losing 1% of their revenue for every 100 ms site loading downtime.
2. Walmart reported of 2% conversion increase because of 1 second boost in their website speed.
3. Increase the loading time to 7 seconds, which added 3% to the conversion level.
4. The Obama Fundraising Company managed to receive additional 14% to conversion and $34000000 when they shortened the loading period from 5 to 2 seconds.
5. Mozilla boosted their site on 2.2 seconds and got 15.4% additional conversions and more than 60000000 of extra downloads.
The tools to speed up your website
There is a great variety of free tools to improve the loading speed of your website. First, you can try content delivery networks. Second, it would be a great idea to reduce the size of images and other content. At last, use WordPress or other instruments, tools and solutions of that kind.
You can also try a better hosting plan. If you're playing big, it's bad for you to use shared hosting and also servers that work with hundreds or even thousands of other clients. Investing in a dedicated server is a good solution as well.
The present e-commerce laws state that if your site loads slower than 2 or 3 seconds, you start to lose audience, conversion and money, of course. So, do your best to speed up your website. It's not a huge amount of work comparing to other issues, but it is one of the most important ones.