In last week’s entry here we touched on ‘bounce’ rates, and how having higher ones can be hugely problematic for any website that’s serving an e-commerce function. If you’ve got a basic WordPress site for your blog on a basic shared web hosting package then you won’t be particularly concerned if those who enter choose to exit shortly thereafter. If your site is the avenue by which you sell products and services and make a livelihood for yourself, it’s going to be a much bigger issue if this becomes a trend.
Bounce rates are something that all conscientious web masters are going to monitor, even the ones who aren’t much of a master at all. We’re like any good Canadian web hosting provider in that we make these analytics resources available to people through our control panel, and most other providers will do the same so that it’s made easier to see if there’s some deficiency to your website that’s causing visitors to leave far too soon.
We found an interesting resource that puts the importance of website load times in real perspective for people who might not get the magnitude of it otherwise, and we thought we should share that here today.
2 or 3 at Most
The general consensus is that a website should load in less than 2 to 3 seconds, and more simply your website should load as fast as possible. Anything more than this time frame and your risk losing potential customers. There was a study done by Google in 2017 that indicated that as page load time goes from 1 second to 3, the likelihood of that visitor ‘bouncing’ increases by 32%.
It’s very possible that these numbers will have increased by this point 4 years later. The reality is the longer your page takes to load, the more likely it is users will find that to be unacceptable.
There’s no getting around the fact a fast user experience is extremely important. And even more so with the increasing predominance of mobile browsing. An analysis of 900,000 landing pages across several countries and industry sectors found that the majority of mobile sites are too slow. Apparently the average time needed for a mobile landing page to load is 22 seconds, and when you keep in mind that 2 to 3 seconds at-most guideline this shows that there’s probably a whole lot of bouncing going on.
The same study found that on average it took 10.3 seconds to fully load a webpage on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile. We can pair this with stats like the one that indicates mobile minutes account for 79% of online time in the United States, and it’s well known that desktop conversion rates are higher.
Plus:
- The average time it takes for a desktop webpage to load is 10.3 seconds
- The average web page takes 87.84% longer to load on mobile than desktop
- 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load
- Bounce rates are highest for mobile shoppers, in comparison to tablet and desktop users
Load Time & Relation to Customer Behavior
It’s commonly understood that page speed affects user experience, but exactly how detrimental that can be may still beyond some people’s understanding. The load time of a website impacts consumer behaviour directly. A page that takes longer to load will mean a higher bounce rate. Those running an online business should understand that a slow load time can result in a higher bounce rate, a general loss of traffic, and a significant loss in conversions.
Keep this in mind as well; The average attention span for a Generation Z person is just 8 seconds, and the average Millennial attention span is only slightly better than that. Most of these people won’t be inclined to wait for a page to load, and more often than not they will search for a new page.
Here’s more in a quick reference list on what may happen when your load time is too slow:
- Approximately 70% of people say that the speed of a page affects their willingness to buy from an online retailer
- Even a point 1 (0.1%) change in page load time can impact user journey and continued progression through a site
- The number 1 reason in the U.S. why consumers choose to bounce from a mobile web page is excessive latency
- When eCommerce sites load slower than expected, more than 45% of visitors will be less likely to proceed with purchasing
- Even just a 2-second delay in page speed can push bounce rates up by more than double
Load Times & Relation to SEO
You shouldn’t need to be told that good SEO and higher SERPs are of primary importance all the time for any eCommerce website. It’s been more than a decade now since Google include page speed as a ranking factor for desktop, and it did the same for mobile-first indexing three years ago in 2018. Long story short, your website is going to be ranked based on mobile presence, not desktop.
This means that if your site is overly slow on mobile, your SERPs may take a hit. And while Google deemed website load time a ranking signal, marketers actually aren’t entirely convinced. One study of 11.8 million Google search results indicated that there was no correlation between speed and first page Google rankings.
Google’s ‘Speed Update’ tells a different story as the update only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users. However, it’s true that site speed also affects other ranking factors like bounce rates and total time on-site. The estimate is that the average page loading speed for the first page result on Google is 1.65 seconds. Long story short again, if you have an extremely slow webpage you are not going to make it onto the first page of Google. You may not even make into the 2 or 3 page
And considering that prospective customers aren’t inclined to dig very deep when finding what they’re looking for, that’s a genuine big deal. We’ll wrap up today by suggesting you consider this:
In last week’s entry here we touched on ‘bounce’ rates, and how having higher ones can be hugely problematic for any website that’s serving an e-commerce function. If you’ve got a basic WordPress site for your blog on a basic shared web hosting package then you won’t be particularly concerned if those who enter choose to exit shortly thereafter. If your site is the avenue by which you sell products and services and make a livelihood for yourself, it’s going to be a much bigger issue if this becomes a trend.
Bounce rates are something that all conscientious web masters are going to monitor, even the ones who aren’t much of a master at all. We’re like any good Canadian web hosting provider in that we make these analytics resources available to people through our control panel, and most other providers will do the same so that it’s made easier to see if there’s some deficiency to your website that’s causing visitors to leave far too soon.
We found an interesting resource that puts the importance of website load times in real perspective for people who might not get the magnitude of it otherwise, and we thought we should share that here today.
2 or 3 at Most
The general consensus is that a website should load in less than 2 to 3 seconds, and more simply your website should load as fast as possible. Anything more than this time frame and your risk losing potential customers. There was a study done by Google in 2017 that indicated that as page load time goes from 1 second to 3, the likelihood of that visitor ‘bouncing’ increases by 32%.
It’s very possible that these numbers will have increased by this point 4 years later. The reality is the longer your page takes to load, the more likely it is users will find that to be unacceptable.
There’s no getting around the fact a fast user experience is extremely important. And even more so with the increasing predominance of mobile browsing. An analysis of 900,000 landing pages across several countries and industry sectors found that the majority of mobile sites are too slow. Apparently the average time needed for a mobile landing page to load is 22 seconds, and when you keep in mind that 2 to 3 seconds at-most guideline this shows that there’s probably a whole lot of bouncing going on.
The same study found that on average it took 10.3 seconds to fully load a webpage on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile. We can pair this with stats like the one that indicates mobile minutes account for 79% of online time in the United States, and it’s well known that desktop conversion rates are higher.
Plus:
- The average time it takes for a desktop webpage to load is 10.3 seconds
- The average web page takes 87.84% longer to load on mobile than desktop
- 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load
- Bounce rates are highest for mobile shoppers, in comparison to tablet and desktop users
Load Time & Relation to Customer Behavior
It’s commonly understood that page speed affects user experience, but exactly how detrimental that can be may still beyond some people’s understanding. The load time of a website impacts consumer behaviour directly. A page that takes longer to load will mean a higher bounce rate. Those running an online business should understand that a slow load time can result in a higher bounce rate, a general loss of traffic, and a significant loss in conversions.
Keep this in mind as well; The average attention span for a Generation Z person is just 8 seconds, and the average Millennial attention span is only slightly better than that. Most of these people won’t be inclined to wait for a page to load, and more often than not they will search for a new page.
Here’s more in a quick reference list on what may happen when your load time is too slow:
- Approximately 70% of people say that the speed of a page affects their willingness to buy from an online retailer
- Even a point 1 (0.1%) change in page load time can impact user journey and continued progression through a site
- The number 1 reason in the U.S. why consumers choose to bounce from a mobile web page is excessive latency
- When eCommerce sites load slower than expected, more than 45% of visitors will be less likely to proceed with purchasing
- Even just a 2-second delay in page speed can push bounce rates up by more than double
Load Times & Relation to SEO
You shouldn’t need to be told that good SEO and higher SERPs are of primary importance all the time for any eCommerce website. It’s been more than a decade now since Google include page speed as a ranking factor for desktop, and it did the same for mobile-first indexing three years ago in 2018. Long story short, your website is going to be ranked based on mobile presence, not desktop.
This means that if your site is overly slow on mobile, your SERPs may take a hit. And while Google deemed website load time a ranking signal, marketers actually aren’t entirely convinced. One study of 11.8 million Google search results indicated that there was no correlation between speed and first page Google rankings.
Google’s ‘Speed Update’ tells a different story as the update only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users. However, it’s true that site speed also affects other ranking factors like bounce rates and total time on-site. The estimate is that the average page loading speed for the first page result on Google is 1.65 seconds. Long story short again, if you have an extremely slow webpage you are not going to make it onto the first page of Google. You may not even make into the 2 or 3 page
And considering that prospective customers aren’t inclined to dig very deep when finding what they’re looking for, that’s a genuine big deal. We’ll wrap up today by suggesting you consider this:
- Users spend more time on websites that load faster and the number of pages those users view decreases as page speed slows down
- Sites with an average page load time of 2 seconds had customers view an average of 8.9 pages, compared to those with a load time of 7 seconds where users viewed only 3.7 pages
