Why Site Speed Matters: The Importance of PageSpeed for Your Website
In today’s digital age, websites have become a vital aspect of our daily lives. We use them for information, entertainment, communication, and even commerce. However, have you ever experienced a website that took too long to load? Frustrating, isn’t it? This is where page speed comes into play. Page speed refers to how fast a website loads its content. In this blog post, we will delve deeper into what page speed is, why it is crucial, and how it affects your website’s performance.
According to Google, As your page load time increases from 1 to 5s, the probability of bounce increases by 90%.
What is Page Speed?
Page speed is the amount of time it takes for a webpage to load its content entirely. It is usually measured in seconds, including the time it takes to retrieve all the elements on the page, such as images, text, videos, and scripts. A slow page speed means that the user has to wait longer for the page to load, which can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction. According to research, a page that takes longer than three seconds to load is likely to lose visitors.
Why Faster page speed matters
- Better User Experience: Faster page speed means your website loads quickly, making it easier for your customers to navigate and browse your products. A fast website also helps in reducing bounce rates, as customers are less likely to abandon a slow-loading website.
- Improved Search Engine Rankings: Search engines, like Google, prioritize fast-loading websites as they offer a better user experience. Therefore, faster page speed can help your eCommerce website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Increased Conversion Rates: A faster website can improve your eCommerce website’s conversion rates, as customers are more likely to complete a purchase if the website is quick and easy to use. According to research, a delay of just one second can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
- Reduced Cart Abandonment: A fast-loading eCommerce website can also help reduce cart abandonment rates. If the checkout process is quick and smooth, customers are less likely to abandon their carts.
- High Bounce Rate — According to Google, when an eCommerce store’s website page speed falls from 1s to 10s, it increases its bounce rate to 123%. Due to slower e-commerce store speed, visitors immediately leave it and switch to a competitor’s website. Such behavior increases the bounce rate of your store, which can affect your brand’s value, and search engines will not give a boost to your store, which ends up with a loss of sales and conversions.
Let’s say you have an e-commerce store that generates $100,000 in revenue per month, with a 5-second page load time and 50% bounce rate. By improving your page speed to 2 seconds and reducing your bounce rate to 30%, you could potentially increase your revenue by $360,000 per year, highlighting the importance of optimizing website performance and user experience.
How your ads are getting affected
Let’s say you are running a Facebook ad campaign that is driving traffic to your website. You have 10,000 clicks on your Facebook ad, but when you check your Google Analytics data, you only see 8,000 sessions recorded on your website. This means that 20% of the people who clicked on your ad did not stay on your website long enough to be recorded by Google Analytics.
Upon further investigation, you discover that your website has slow page speed, which is causing users to abandon your site before Google Analytics can record their session. This means that your Facebook ad campaign is not as effective as it could be, as you are losing potential customers due to slow page speed.
To address this issue, you decide to improve your website’s page speed by optimizing images, minifying code, and enabling caching. After implementing these changes, you see an improvement in user behavior on your website. More users are staying on your site for longer periods of time, and your Google Analytics data now shows a higher number of sessions than your Facebook ad clicks.
By improving your website’s page speed, you were able to reduce the number of lost potential customers and increase the effectiveness of your Facebook ad campaign. This highlights the importance of optimizing website performance, particularly for ad campaigns where user attention is limited and every click counts.
Why you cannot solely rely on tools like Hotjar, Google Analytics
One reason why you cannot solely rely on tools like Hotjar and Google Analytics to measure visitors or bounce rate is that these tools rely on tracking codes that are added to your website. If a user leaves your website before the tracking code has a chance to fire, it may not be counted in the measurement. This can happen if the user has a slow internet connection, experiences a technical issue, or simply navigates away from your site quickly. Therefore, relying solely on tracking codes can result in incomplete data and inaccurate measurements, which can impact your ability to make informed decisions about your website’s performance and user experience. It’s important to supplement these tools with other measurement methods and understand their limitations to ensure accurate data.
Here is a case study comparing pagespeed performance score for 2500 Shopify Stores
- The average page speed performance score for stores is approximately 36, indicating room for improvement in their page speed performance.
- The distribution of page speed performance scores is left-skewed, implying that a greater number of stores have lower page speed performance scores than higher ones.
- Out of the 2500 stores, only 400 had a performance score above 50.
Measuring Site Speed
- Run the test on your region on Mobile on GTMetrix.
- Use Google’s Pagespeed Insight for accurate behaviour. (That gives actionable insights)
But, How Reliable are above tests
Tools like GTMetrix and Google’s Pagespeed use synthetic tests to measure website performance, which involves simulating devices and network conditions to evaluate how a website performs under idealized conditions. While synthetic testing can help identify potential performance issues, it doesn’t provide a complete picture of how a website performs in the real world. Factors such as network congestion and device variability can significantly impact website performance, which synthetic tests can’t replicate.
In contrast, CrUX provides real-world performance data based on actual user experiences. The data is collected from Chrome users who have opted in to share their browsing history and performance data, offering a more accurate representation of how a website performs in the real world. This data also provides insights into how actual users are experiencing a website, which can help identify areas for improvement that may not be apparent from synthetic testing alone. By leveraging CrUX data, website owners can gain a better understanding of how their website is performing in the real world and make informed decisions to optimize their website for a better user experience.
Use Looker Studio to see Real behaviour (not emulated like GTMetrix). Check your site real behaviour here and work the way up :))
Go to CrUX Launcher, enter your site’s name and you will see real user insights like this.
Common Practices to Improve your Site Speed
- Optimize Images: Large images can slow down your website’s loading time. Optimize your images by compressing them without sacrificing quality, and use the appropriate file format for each image.
- Minify Code: Minifying your code by removing unnecessary spaces, comments, and line breaks can help reduce the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, which in turn can improve your website’s loading speed.
- Remove Redundant Code: Removing unnecessary code from your website can help reduce the amount of data that needs to be loaded and improve your website’s loading time.
- Use CSS Instead of JavaScript: Whenever possible, use CSS instead of JavaScript for simple animations, sliders, and carousels. This can help improve website performance and loading time, leading to a better user experience.
- Use Caching: Caching allows your website to store frequently accessed data, such as images and CSS files, on the user’s device, which can significantly reduce loading times for subsequent visits.
- Enable Gzip Compression: Gzip compression compresses your website’s files before sending them to the user’s browser, which can reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred and improve loading times.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN is a network of servers that are distributed across the globe and can deliver your website’s content from the server closest to the user, reducing latency and improving website speed.
- Remove Unused Plugins and Add-ons: Unused plugins and add-ons can slow down your website’s loading time, so it’s important to regularly review and remove any that are not necessary.
