How Mobile Load Times Affect the Customer Experience (& Impact Sales)
Think fast! 70% of your customers say page load speed impacts buying decisions.
According to Google, the average time it takes for a page to load on mobile devices is 15 seconds. Given that more than half of consumers leave a page if they have to wait more than 3 seconds for it to load, businesses need to take serious note of page loading speeds. So how is speed connected with sales?
Customers are particularly demanding when it comes to their online experiences nowadays. If a slow mobile experience drives customers away, a fast mobile experience can help attract and keep them. Mobile internet browsing hasn’t yet caught up with desktop mobile searching and speed can be slower on mobile devices: Yet that doesn’t mean that speed isn’t an issue. Businesses still need to develop a website that will load in a reasonable amount of time through a mobile device.
Time is Money
A decrease in user experience is another significant consequence of slow loading websites — users
who don’t tolerate slow loading sites, don’t bother with them at all. According to Radware, approximately 51% of users in the US said that site slowness is the top reason they’d abandon a purchase. That means that having a slow website cuts your traffic (and potential sales or clients) in half.
Users will perceive a slow or clunky website as a reflection of how your business is run and how much it cares, and with more than 40 percent of visitors who had a bad experience saying they’d share that bad experience with others, it’s in your best interest to seriously spruce up your website.
How can I fix it?
Here’s the good news. If a slow mobile experience drives customers away, a fast mobile experience can help attract and keep them — and those milliseconds can earn millions. Thankfully it isn’t rocket science to up your page load speed. Start by taking stock of your website and how it’s performing. Points you should be paying attention to include:
1. Testing your website’s speed: One option is to use Google’s new Test My Site tool to help businesses understand, measure, and benchmark their mobile site speed.
2. Compressing Text and Images: Decreasing or converting your image sizing and scales can help dramatically, as well as removing any video content that isn’t critical to your site’s content.
3. Website Design: Over-designing web pages by adding loads of banners, images, icons, and other additions can lead to slower loading times.
4. Mobile Optimization: Last but not least, making your site mobile friendly is probably the most important thing you should do for your website. A majority of consumers now access the internet via mobile browser, not on a desktop. So ensure to make sure your website is designed so that it is responsive per device and screen size.
Looking Ahead
Your site’s speed remains an important factor to increase site conversions. Customers expect that your website will load fast whether this is on a mobile device or desktop. A slower site can mean a significant loss in your sales and can damage your business’ chance to grow and develop.
Begin testing your website right away with above recommendations, this can not only help increase your website’s speed, it will also offer you a significant chance of growing your bottom line.
