Why Website Performance is Key to Online Growth?

Greetings to all the website owners! A website is the avenue or destination for your brand, company, e-store, etc. in the digital world. We all want to design the best looking websites, with catchy design, easy navigation, filled with useful information. But there is one thing that is often overlooked – Performance.

Website performance measures how quickly your website and its elements load and display on users’ devices, including desktops, mobiles, tablets, or any other device. To keep it simple, the faster a website loads and displays, the better it performs.

Everything is picking up pace, what’s decreasing is a visitor’s attention span. If your website is slow to load or is not optimized for different devices, there is a high probability of greater exit rate. The visitors will simply move on to the next website that can offer them what they want. Costing you a loss in customers, revenue, and reputation.

This unfavorable situation can be avoided by understanding website performance and its importance in detail. So, let’s start our journey to save your business and website from lagging behind.

Why is website performance important?

It’s crucial to understand that modern consumers are always connected and frequently use a variety of devices, such as desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, to access the internet. Moreover, they have short attention spans and high expectations, making website speed a critical factor.

A slow website can result in a poor user experience, triggering a domino effect that can negatively impact SEO, conversion rates, bounce rates, user experience, and even your brand image. In short, your website’s performance can either make or break your business.

In the following sections, we’ll delve into each factor that directly or indirectly influences users’ perceptions of your business and explore ways to improve your website’s overall performance.. Excited? What, say?

User Experience

User experience refers to the overall impression a user has while using a product, in this case, a website. A well-performing website can help create a positive first impression of your website and business.

You may wonder, “What is the ideal website speed?”. However, there is no definitive benchmark for how fast a website should load. Nonetheless, there are several statistics available on the internet, ranging from 5 seconds to 0.5 seconds.

I guess the most influential answer comes from the company that runs the world’s most popular search engine – Google. In 2010, Google stated that 2 seconds is the threshold for ecommerce websites. Another article states that 40 percent of the users abandon the website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

A well-performing website gives the visitors what they want fast, provides better satisfaction, and gives the user more time to explore different sections of the website.

Better SEO

Search Engine Optimization has been a constant struggle for most businesses. Everyone is trying to rank first on the search engine results page. There are many factors that influence the search engine ranking, like content, keywords, headers, meta, optimized images, internal links, and much more. One among these is website performance.

Google mentioned it way back in 2010: that website performance is one of the factors that influence SEO. To make things simpler, we could just assume you have two websites with the same content, keywords, meta, internal links, etcetera, etcetera, everything is the same except there is a slight difference in website performance. Then the search engine will prefer the site that has better web performance, even though everything else is the same.

There is also something else you could take into consideration – pogo sticking. It is an SEO term, to describe when a user goes to a certain website from the search engine and instantly presses the back button. Search engines consider this as – a user came to a website looking for certain information and left immediately because the user didn’t get the required information.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that pogo sticking can occur not only due to the relevance of the information but also due to poor website performance. Research indicates that 40 percent of users abandon a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. Search engines may interpret this as poor keyword usage or irrelevant content and subsequently penalize your site. As more users pogo stick from your site, your ranking is likely to decrease.

You can utilize tools such as Google Analytics to monitor your website’s bounce rate and Page Speed Insights to gain insights into how to enhance your page’s performance.

Less Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is also a SEO term. When a user from any source enters your site and does not perform any action on it, it counts as a bounce rate. For example, if you are at our website, and leave without subscribing to our newsletter (that’s your hint, to subscribe to WPWhiteBoard😉) or clicking on any links on the site, it is marked as a bounce by search engines.

A fast website attracts more visitors than a slow loading one, and also delivers a great user experience to the visitors.Quicker websites tend to garner more social media shares, leading to increased organic traffic.

You could get a better idea of how website performance is related to bounce rate by observing the above graph. It shows that the bounce rate was 9 percent for the pages loading under 2 seconds, which just started to spike as soon as the loading time passed the 3 second mark.

With that being said, do not curse yourself if you can’t reach the 2 or 3 second mark. Achieving the 2 or 3 second mark is a great goal to strive, for providing a great user experience to visitors. You should be able to achieve it easily by going through our curated performance articles.

Brand Image

Website performance can impact how a customer perceives a brand . A website that is slow or has technical issues can make customers question the brand’s credibility and professionalism. When the website’s performance is good, the brand and the people behind it are perceived as serious and professional.

Meanwhile, a slow performing website is perceived as a sign of poor commitment and lack of focus on the business. Skilled found that 79% of customers don’t make a repeated purchase from an online store if they are “dissatisfied” with the site’s speed.

The bar for customer expectations is rising, and so is the game of your competitors. If you could tweak the website performance, you will have an upper hand among your competitors. So, let’s quickly look at the tips you could use to boost your website performance and enjoy the beautiful outcomes.

Tips to improve the performance of your website

Improving website performance is not rocket science, let that sink in! Optimize these components of your website to improve its performance:

• Choosing the right web-hosting provider
• Using a Content Delivery Network
• Plugin Optimization
• Choosing the right theme
• Image Optimization
• Using Caching

You can read about each component in detail, and learn how to boost your website’s performance here: Tips to Manage High Traffic WordPress website.

Parting notes

A website is going to be the first touchpoint for your fans, customers, and clients. So make sure it gives them the best experience, which in turn gives you the highest conversions.

Don’t let the efforts of email marketing, social media marketing, quality content, keyword research, and back-linking go in vain just because of website performance!

Still in a dilemma whether I should spend resources for website performance? Learn the importance of a website and its role in your business: 10 Vital Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Website.