The Effect of Web Page Load Time on Conversion Rate

Posted: Aug 19, 2012
Author: WordJack Media

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Web users today are incredibly impatient. They want what they want, and they want it NOW. According to web marketing and analytics company KISSmetrics, for each second your web page load time is delayed, conversion rate can be reduced by up to 7%. Check out this infographic (link) for details.  

According to surveys conducted by Gomez.com and Akamai.com, nearly 50% of web users expect each web site they visit to load in 2 seconds or less, and they will give up on any site that isn’t finished loading within 3 seconds. Google also considers website speed when determining your search engine ranking. The bottom line is: if someone wants to see your website, they’d better be able to see it FAST.

While it may be tempting to add lots of fancy designs and tools, high-resolution photographs, animation, and lots and lots of content to your web site, all of these factors can increase your web page’s load time and effectively kill your SEO rankings and conversion rate.

In a recent survey of local search experts, “Load time of landing pages” was considered the 12^th most significant ranking factor relating to websites, when it comes to local search ranking (“Local Search Ranking Factors”, Mihn 2012): “Having a blazingly fast landing page has a marginal positive influence in rankings but a very slow load time can cause your business to disappear from Google's search results” (Adam Dorfman, SIM Partners, Chicago, IL)

If your small business’ web site is loading slowly, what can you do about it?

For an in-depth look at some pointers on how to speed up your web site, check out this article from Yahoo (link).