You Have Three Seconds To Impress Me Or I'm Outa Here

bybarbil

100 followers

Updated 4 years ago

We all know how frustrating it is to click on a link to visit a website and then sit waiting for the page to load. We humans are notoriously impatient, so we don't wait long.

According to the search engine giant Google, your web page needs to load within three seconds on desktop devices and mobile devices. They also go on to say that the current average load time of web pages on mobile devices is twenty-two seconds. Hmmmm... there is work to be done there.

Think about it. If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, your visitors may be leaving your site before they ever get a chance to read your amazingly persuasive ad copy. And where do you think they go when they click that BACK button and leave your webpage?

If they found your website on a search engine, then they most likely will just click on the next entry. You are actually doing your competitors a favor and redirecting your targeted users to THEIR website!

Another thing to consider is that the first thing your visitor does once the page loads, is to either click on one of the buttons, or scroll down. This info is according to a study by AKAMAI, where they say the average internet user expects your web page to be fully interactive as soon as it loads. This is important to understand, because if the page is still loading resources, then that button may not do anything when your visitor clicks it. Or the page may not scroll...
Either way, that visitor clicks BACK button, slamming the door on his way out.

It is very important for us to understand how long our pages take to load, so we can take measures to improve the page load time.

Ways To Improve Page Load Time

There are many factors which may result in slow load speeds. The user's internet connection is one of the most obvious culprits. It is easy to assume that because my website loads fast on my computer, it loads fast for others as well. But that assumption will get me in hot water quickly, since a lot of the world does not have broad-band internet. In fact, believe it or not, there are still millions of dial-up users!

But, we cannot control that. All we can do is recognize that slow internet connections cause our websites to load agonizingly slow, and optimize our website for speed. Make it be as fast as it CAN be. (And hope people get off that wallet and get a faster internet service provider.)

1) Optimize Images

Images are usually the first thing that slows down a website. Keep in mind that the larger the file size of that pretty graphic, the longer it takes to load on your page. So, the first thing to look at is the usage of images on your page. First, ask yourself if you really need the image. Then, if you just can't part with it, reduce its file size.

That is easily done by photo editing software like PhotoShop, or GIMP - The free alternative to PhotoShop. GIMP is open source. I have used it, and I gotta say... it is powerful. You can do much more with it than just reduce image size.

Let's say you have an image that is a little under three inches square, 2000 pixels x 2000 pixels. This image has a file size of 2.7MB.

Then, let's say you edit that image in GIMP and reduce the size to 640 x 640 pixels. The image is now only 255KB in size. That's like a gazillion times smaller. And therefore, faster loading.

2) Defer JavaScript

This is another huge resource hog. It has as much impact on your page load time as images. There are a number of things you can do to speed things up, but they are fairly technical and beyond the scope of this article. So.... sorry, you are outa luck.

(Just Kidding)

The easiest way to deal with defering JavaScript is to let a plug-in do it. Since we all use WordPress, you will be happy to know that there are many plug-ins that will take care of it.

3) Content Delivery Network

A CDN is a service provider that maintains a network of servers and data centers around the world. The idea is to store your data on each of their servers and then serve them to the user from the closest server. So if someone in India is clicking on your link, your webpage will be served to them from India, instead of halfway round the world.

CDN's also use techy stuff like image compression, and provide website owners with the power to manipulate images. Their services often come with features like Auto Cropping and WebP, that can reduce the total image resource size by 80%.

Conclusion

Google maintains that site speed is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. If your website is taking longer than three seconds to load, you can expect Google to penalize that site by ranking it poorly.

So, not only do you have to worry about your visitors bailing out and running to your competitor, you also have to contend with the lousy rankings your page gets because it is so slow to load.

Keep this in mind while designing web pages. Do all you can to reduce image size, JavaScript drag, and anything else that is affecting your page's load speed.

It can have a significant impact in your conversion rate. Suddenly, people are actually sticking around long enough to read your offer. Yipppeeee!!!

What other factors have you encountered that affect load speed? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Please tell me what you think about it.

Your friend,
Bill