When a consumer visits a website, there are a few things they're going to look at. First and foremost, they're going to check out the web design. This is especially true seeing as how Northumbria and Sheffield Universities have found that about 94% of a user's first impression of a website is based on design. But design isn't everything -- consumers are also going to notice how long a page takes to load. Page speed is becoming increasingly important in today's fast-paced world, and this article is going to discuss a few reasons why.
User experience: Page speed plays a major role in the overall experience a user has. In today's digital world, if a site takes more than a few seconds to load, chances are, the user is going to go to a different site. Users want sites that load quickly and efficiently. This way, they can navigate the website easily. And an easy experience ultimately results in conversions. To avoid a high bounce rate, companies should ensure their page speed is where it should be. Working with local marketing consulting firms can help address issues like slow loading pages.
Search engine ranking: Search engines are now using page speed as a ranking factor. This means if your page loads slowly, it's not going to get as good of a ranking as other, faster loading sites. And if your site doesn't even show up in the search engine results, how do you expect consumers to find your company? Users have a better experience and tend to spend more time on sites that load quickly, which are both ranking factors. So make sure you work with a reputable website development company to ensure your site's speed is up to par before you get booted off the search engine results page.
Paid advertisements: When you invest in paid media and advertisements, you want to be paying as little as possible per click. Not only that, but you want your ad to show up in a reasonable spot on the search results page. Unfortunately, a slow page speed can make this difficult to do. Search engines will crawl your site and looks at factors, like page speed, to determine an overall quality score. This score is then used to decide how much you pay for clicks and where your ad is placed. So a faster page speed will be beneficial when it comes to paid search results.
Web design consists of a variety of factors, page speed being one of them. And as you can see, page speed is important for a variety of reasons. So if you're focusing on your web design, keep this information in mind and ensure your loading speed is where it should be.