Trust this: no user experience list includes waiting for your web pages to load. One of the major things that irritate your visitors continues to load times. Statistics show that when the UX is smooth and reliable, you get better conversion rates. A few milliseconds of load time makes all the difference to the customer … Continued
Trust this: no user experience list includes waiting for your web pages to load. One of the major things that irritate your visitors continues to load times. Statistics show that when the UX is smooth and reliable, you get better conversion rates.
A few milliseconds of load time makes all the difference to the customer experience. You need to know how slow websites hurt your conversion rates.
According to a report released by Portent in 2019, the highest impact on conversion rates is the first five seconds of page load time. Conversion rates drop as much as 4.42% for every second it takes your pages to load.
Unbounce reported in the same year, almost three-quarters of users said page speed will impact a decision to use that sight again. Haven’t you had that instant where a page was taking too long to load and you gave up?
In that same survey, 50% of users said they’d gladly give up video, animation, images (and especially ads) if they got faster loads. Google noted in 2017 if a page load goes 10 seconds, there is a greater probability of the visitor giving up. The probability of a visitor bouncing increases a third if page loads run up to three seconds.
Slow loads affect the chances of a visitor staying on your site, whether they engage or if they use your services, take your advice, or buy your products.
One of the main points here is that marketers and developers, believing they have sufficient load times, don’t comprehend how a few milliseconds will make a difference. They focus on the tangible, such as SEO, design, backlinks, social media, etc.
According to Dotcom-Monitor, “75% of all users will typically bounce as page load time passes the 3-second mark.”
Users want to get to the experience, not wait for it as if they were sitting on a roller coaster. A mere extra second can yield unpleasant user results. The results are losing potential engagement. And expect the devoted web user to speak poorly of their interaction with your site.
Returning customers are key to an online presence. Good-of-mouth is invaluable to building your persona. A major retailer performed an analysis of online behavior in relation to page loading time. There was a noticeable decline in conversion rates as load times jumped from one to four seconds.
Here are a few tips for improving site speed and your UX experience.
You chomp up a big part of your speed time with images, scripts, stylesheets, and more. Each element requires an HTTP request. Use a browser’s Developer Resources to how to see the number of HTTP requests your site calls for. Reducing requests speeds up your site.
Start reducing HTTP requests with your files. Your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS all play a role in speed. Reduce the size of files as the total file number. You may find you can combine elements. This can be especially helpful if you used a template. They tend to have lots of code you don’t even need.
Remove redundancy, unnecessary formatting, code, and whitespace. Eliminate extra line breaks, spaces, indentations, anything preventing pages from being lean.
Find a solution that simplifies minifying and combining files. A plugin like WP Rocket makes doing this work on WordPress easier.
As reliable as it may be, Java files tend to be larger than most. If you defer its loading while other elements load, you can get certain content in faster. With WordPress and WP Rocket, you select Load JS files deferred. With HTML, you create an external JS file before the </body> tag such as “defer.js.”
To undertake the challenge of reducing load times will be an arduous task. It may seem to take more time than necessary. But trust it will have a significant and positive impact on site performance and how you impact conversions.
