In today’s fast-paced world, businesses must meet and exceed their customers’ tempo. Slow service will result in churned customers and a poor reputation.

Consider restaurants. Not only do restaurant owners and waitstaff want to keep customers satisfied by serving them quickly, but efficient service means more customers and increased sales.

Whether your business is strictly online or has a brick-and-mortar component, your online speed matters to your customers. If it’s critical to your customers, it should be for you, too.

The top way to ruin your business? Have a slow load time on your website.

​Business owners must prioritize web speed over everything else on their site. Here’s why speed matters most and how to increase your website traffic with improved load times.

If you wonder what strategy would most help an e-commerce business drive traffic to their website, web speed takes top billing. If nothing else, website speed must keep up with the customers and competition.

​Technology is constantly changing and setting the bar for customary speed. Customers will notice and leave an abnormally slow site. “Abnormal” is relative and will vary depending on the technology’s potential at the time.

Google includes page speed in its ranking algorithm. Slower load times lead to decreased rankings on search engine pages. A lower rank makes the business less visible to customers, reducing traffic to the site. Rank order sinks further, and the vicious cycle continues.

Conversion rates measure the customer’s ability to complete an intended action. Conversion funnel optimization depends on acceptable load times–the slower the time, the lower the conversion rate; the faster the load time, the higher the rate.

As reported in a ToolTester August 2023 report, average load times are less than three seconds on a desktop and less than nine via mobile. The report noted that conversion rates dropped by 4.42% with each second of load time that ticks by up to the five seconds.

​Business owners should aim for a load time of one to two seconds. What about load times faster than five seconds? That leads to the next problem a faster load time can solve…

According to a November 2023 Google report, the probability of bounce increases from 32% at one to three seconds of load time to a whopping 90% when load times go from one to five seconds.

​A load time that doesn’t meet the customer’s pace, expectations, or standard experiences can lead to lost customers and revenue. Customers lose interest or become frustrated by their experience and move on to a competitor.

The more time a customer spends on a business’s website, the more likely they are to convert or make a purchase.

​Additionally, a longer dwell time improves SEO rankings. When customers leave a site quickly, Google uses that information to determine whether or not the site is useful and calculates that in its ranking algorithm.

There’s overall website speed, and then there’s web page speed. While optimizing the load speed of individual pages helps with overall site speed, many factors affect load speed.

Network conditions are the most uncontrollable factors. These include the internet service provider’s (ISP) service, local network quality, and the individual user’s technology (using 3G and 4G versus 5G capabilities).

All the resources that make a page function add weight. These resources include videos, hi-def images, cascading style sheets (CSS), JavaScript files, plugins, extensions, and widgets. The larger the files, the weightier the page and the slower it loads.

The location of the host’s data center significantly impacts speed the further away the access point is. For example, if the hosting site is in Canada but a customer in Africa is trying to access it, it will take a long time for that data to travel to the user.

Business owners have tools at their disposal to boost their page loading times:

Google’s Page Speed Insights assists with testing and identifying factors reducing load times. Professionals can also help a business owner interpret and find solutions for advanced or mounting problems.

Business owners should consider using a dedicated host instead of a shared one. Dedicated hosting is more of an investment, but clients avoid sharing RAM or bandwidth with others and typically receive preferential treatment should they experience network problems.

First, a reputable site-building software known for its speed, user interface, functionality, and price is ideal for creating a website. When it’s done right from the start, businesses waste less time and improve their potential earnings.

Compress large files, reducing anything bigger than 150 bytes. Use .jpeg as the go-to file size instead of larger sizes. Then, use software to minimize .jpegs even further.

Remove unnecessary characters within coding, like spaces, punctuation, unused code, comments, and formatting. Use a browser cache for redundant material, like images, JavaScript files, and CSS.

​Put speed above all else. Videos, images, widgets, and the like are no match for bounced customers. If an image or other type of file slows down the page after all is said and done, do without it.

Use a content delivery network (CDN) to copy a version of the website to multiple locations for a faster user experience.

Slow load speeds can hurt business in many ways. Don’t let it be the often-overlooked but significant detail that keeps you from seeing results.

​Build your website using the best site builder that optimizes for speed. Routinely test and revise your site to keep up with current technology.