Ever wondered just why your site's bounce rate always remains shy of the tolerable range? To accommodate that you changed your website's look and feel, content and every possible thing, but all corrective measures returned no valuable results and were futile. Sometimes the most basic of things could play the wrong card for your business, and I'm referring to the page load speed. Yes, you read that right, and through this article we will discuss just how page speed can be optimized for a website's SEO.
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Page Load Speed Matters for Your Business Conversion - Period
As per several industry surveys , the ideal load time is less than 3 seconds and you'd be surprised to know that any website or a web page taking longer than that could lose over 70 per cent of its niche audience. It must be noted that as many as half of the global citizens expect a site to load within 2 to 3 seconds, and are prone to bounce off if they are kept waiting for a web page to spin, sputter and open.
Consider a simple situation - You forget about your wife's birthday and now you are desperately searching for an online flower store to send a bouquet to her office. Your search query goes something like this "rose bouquet for her birthday" and the Google search page is dominated with paid results and pictures of photographs. So you click the first two pages in two tabs - one loads quicker whilst the other makes you wait and wait.
(Search Result with query - " rose bouquet for her birthday")
(Above: Page Speed Report - http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.myflowertree.com)
(Above: Page Speed Report - http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.become.com)
The conclusion - The page (MyFlowerTree) opened quickly compelled you to convert, while the second page (flowers.become.com) lost your engagement with its immensely slow page load speed.
It must be noted that both websites paid Google for an ad space, invested in their products and marketing channels, probably have a paid data center and other things that complete their digital infrastructure. However, a simple little thing - page load speed - of their website made them lose their business with you. This exactly explains the point just why page speed matters for conversion.
Simple Tricks To Optimize Your Website's Page Speed
Use Limited Tracking Codes
I know tracking codes are vital for most webmasters to understand their on-page visitor behavior and the conversion mindset. However, just one or may be two different analytic programs can do the job, and you don't need 5 different analytic tools and their tracking codes, since they can slow down your web page considerably. Further, it is advised to place tracking code at the end of a page, such that the page can still be opened is the page hasn't finished loading yet.
Less Embedded YouTube Videos and Social Media Sharing Buttons
Embedded YouTube videos are a great for on-page visitor engagement, but the use of iFrames puts an additional load on page speed. This is because video embeds mean loading a separate page within your main page - affecting the net load speed and user experience. 'Everybody is getting Social' and because of that social media share buttons have become a consistent regular on all websites, even though their JavaScript based icons slow down the overall browsing experience. Hence, their usage must be kept minimal for being effective.
Proper Database Structuring
If you intend to keep your website's loading speed optimized for conversion, then you need to maintain a site index. This is necessary because index helps your database to search and curate information quickly when needed. It must be noted that a site index alone could improve your load time from 10 seconds to as little as 1 second! No netizen likes to wait or stare blankly at the rotating loading icon - and your website mustn't give them something that they despise.
Invest in a Content Delivery Network
If you are an internet-based business owner and looking to expand your footprint across continents, then you have to invest in a content delivery network model. Your traditional data centers would still work and continue to do so for a long time, but what if your new clients are based out of China and your server is located in Phoenix, Arizona. It must be noted that buying a data center space in China would mean considerable input costs - that too just for a page speed?? This seems impractical, and this is where Content Delivery Network (CDN) comes into picture. Virtualization and storage could be purchased on a pay-as-you-go basis, but from business perspective and expansion - CDN is a great idea.