What is Website Page Loading Speed and Why It Matters

You will hardly come across a business that does not have a digital presence. Almost all have a website. Theme, design, engaging content, ease of user navigation, visuals etc are all important. These elements play an important role in ensuring that a website runs smoothly and looks good. Apart from all these, a very critical element most people overlook is the page loading speed.

What is Website Page Loading Speed?

How often do you get irritated when your order arrives late at a restaurant? No one likes slow service and people usually complain and leave negative remarks about their experience. Similarly, when you click on a website, the time it takes to fully load is the website page loading speed.

If a website loads slowly, the users tend to close it and go to some other websites. Generally, people only wait for 5-6 seconds for a website to load. If it takes a website any longer, they exit and leave.  Because of the low website page loading speed, the bounce rate of the users’ increases.

It means more and more people will be leaving your website instead of staying and waiting for the page to load. The reason why it matters a lot is that slower page loading speeds lead to a negative user experience which equates to a higher bounce rate. Consequently, your search engine rankings decrease and you might end up moving to the bottom of the search engines.

Many factors can lead to a slow page loading speed. A lot of graphics, high-resolution videos, too much content etc can lead to less load time. Therefore, you should optimize your website and see what elements are causing the slow loading of the website.

Why Does Website Page Loading Speed Matter?

We say that it is important for a website to load quickly. But why is that the case? Why can’t the users wait for a few seconds for the website to load? Once it loads, they can see why there was a delay (the graphics and visuals are spot on, there are a lot of videos to see etc). There is just so much competition out there that everyone is striving to get the first position.

3 Reasons Why Website Page Loading Speed Matters

1. Impatient Customer

The reason is simple: This generation is always online and is very impatient. Moreover, there are different ways in which they can access information. You have mobiles, desktops, laptops and even tablets from which you can go online. They don’t have the time and patience to wait for even more than a second for the website to load. The importance of loading time can be seen from the fact that only a second’s delay in the website loading can reduce conversions by a staggering 7%. That is A LOT! So, to make sure you don’t lose this 7%, businesses need to optimize and work on the speed of their page.

• Search Engine Ranking

Not only the audience, Google and other search engines also pay attention to the loading speed of the page. According to Google, a good page loading speed is between 1-2 seconds. If it takes longer than this, your website can result in a low ranking score because Google reduces the total number of crawler bots coming to your website.

• Excellent User Experience

Businesses exist because of their users/customers. To give them the best experience, you need to have a website that loads quickly. Your blog could have the best content on the internet or your e-commerce store could have the best quality products at the lowest prices and still not be making any sales.

The reason can be your slow web page loading speed. Maybe it’s taking too long for the website to load that your potential customer turns away to some other website.

From this, it is clear how important having a good website loading speed is. The best way to ensure your website will load quickly is to go ahead and have a speed test. An even easier way to ensure that your website is OPTIMIZED in such a way that it loads quickly without compromising on the layout and content, contact Lucid Media. We will help you establish a website that is SEO-friendly and loads quickly, Isn’t that a win-win situation?