DID YOU KNOW that 53% of web page visits on a mobile phone are abandoned if the site takes longer than three seconds?
Make that five seconds, and the probability of a bounce increases to 90%.
In fact, 67% of UK consumers told one survey the main reason they would abandon a purchase is slow loading speed.
A fast loading speed is critical for the good performance of your website in converting visitors into paying customers.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that milliseconds count. For every 100-millisecond cut in the loading speed, one business saw a 1.1% increase in conversion during a session.
It’s also important for site loyalty, according to 52% of online shoppers.
If your home page takes an age to load, it’s not a great sign that your product pages will be any better. Many people will abandon the site here. That will mean your bounce rate, the rate at which people access one page on your site and ‘bounce’ straight off, will also rise. This is a factor which can hamper good SEO for your site and, combined with the amount of time people dwell on a page, can impact on its ranking in search engines.
When someone is checking out potential purchases, they may well compare different products and move between different product descriptions. A clunky slow loading speed is maddening for them and it will put them off. Having lots of tabs open as a workaround can also have a negative, slowing effect on some operating systems.
Slow loading between pages in the checkout can mean customers having to enter credit card details or personal more than once. They are likely to abandon you here or, if they do eventually finish the purchase, never come back. That’s so frustrating and damaging for any online retailer. You have engaged, active customers who want to buy from you now, and you’ve lost them. This will hit your business’s bottom line badly.
People share the experiences they have on your site on social media, independent review sites, and by word of mouth. If your site is slow loading, word will get around quickly.
Talk to your web developer about the potential problems which may be causing this.
It could be an overloaded server, where too many businesses are housed on the same server.
There could also be overly large product images which take up too much space, lots of return tags and white space, unnecessary JavaScript, or unnecessary meta tags.
What you need to do is optimise your content and look at how your server is managed.
Check to see whether your website hosting is giving you what you need.
