Why Should You Care About Page Speed?
So does it really matter how long it takes for your website to load? Well, yes – it happens to matter a lot. The need for speed is increasing. You’re probably well aware speed is just as much of a hot topic among SEO practices as keyword optimization and title tags. But now, Google is giving the SEO community something else to talk about.
Google recently announced what they’re calling “Core Web Vitals” as a ranking factor, and speed is at the heart of this new announcement. SEO experts have been trying to achieve the best page score ever since Google became a thing; however, with Core Web Vitals metrics, website owners now know what the ideal speed they must aim for to get to the top of the SERPs – and it’s causing a bit of fear! Websites today often concentrate on accumulated scores that show up on tools like Pagespeed SpeedInsights, Pingdom, and GTMetrics. The issue with these tools is that they tend to focus on the overall speed instead of individual user experience metrics. Core Web Vital’s concept is to encourage web admins to improve speed metrics that benefit the users and not the browser or bots.
Survey Data:
Research conducted by Google has found that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within 3 seconds. If they bounce, they don’t “bite” on your product. A slow web page is one of the main reasons for abandoning an online purchase.
According to skilled.co, pages that loaded in 2.4 seconds had a 1.9% conversion rate, 3.3 seconds had a conversion rate of 1.5%, 4.2 seconds had a conversion rate less than 1%, and 5.7+ seconds had a conversion rate of 0.6%. Reducing page load times can help reduce drop-off rates, increase sales, and encourage browsers to return your site.