If you’re in online retail and e-commerce and page load speed isn’t a priority, you’ll become aware of the golden opportunity presented when you read this article. Google found that a 0.1-second improvement in page speed grew the average order value by 9.2%. So if such a slight improvement of speed can increase your AOV, what else are you unaware of?
When the attention spans of consumers are decreasing as the expectations of a business are increasing rapidly, the speed at which your page loads is a key performance indicator of the success of your online business. For example when a big corporation like Facebook said “If signals indicate the webpage will load quickly, the link to that webpage might appear higher in your feed.” It shows that they are prioritizing load speed to improve the user experience on their platform and beyond. Speed is especially important if you run Facebook ads and understand how their auction system works and how this simple factor can play a significant role in whether or not your ad shows to the desired customer over a competitor.
Even on video streaming services such as Youtube, when users experience a slight 2-second delay, their stress levels increased by 16%. Once the video began playing, a single pause nearly doubled the levels of stress experienced. The user doesn’t know if the delay will be another second or another 10. If the video loads at all. So the easiest fix for them is to exit the video or platform and find another source that suits their needs. So you could imagine that when you’re in a competitive industry, people won’t hesitate to leave your website in favour of a competitor that provides a better experience.
Not only should website speed be a priority but you should also prioritise what loads first. You will find out exactly why shortly but to reiterate the importance of loading speed, Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. A pretty hefty cost to pay at the scale of Amazon. But Amazon also shows how what you load first for the visitor is essential too, as you can create the illusion of a faster loading time.
For example, in a test carried out by The Future Of Commerce, Amazon first displays the most relevant and engaging content of their website. This also includes firstly loading everything visible to the user before loading what they cant see below the fold – this gives the illusion of a faster loading time which, as we saw with Youtube users, will decrease their stress levels and encourage them to stay on the website for longer.
The 3 critical steps in Amazon’s page loading, although very fast, are as follows:
- Your name and a welcome message show in the header.
This is the initial information shown as it feels more personal. Studies have shown that hearing our name activates areas in our brain that serve as some of our core identity and personality markers. Even people in a vegetative state have strong neurological reactions to hearing their name. In the moment of this personal feeling, it buys more time for the page to continue loading as the visitor is now engaged.
- The complete header, search and hero banner is displayed.
When visiting Amazon, the chances of the product you desire is shown on the front page is low which is why the search bar shows. You also begin to think about the item you are looking for as your following action will most likely be typing the product’s title. As well as showing the full header which gives the Amazon branding and also showing the hero banner. The banner displays an engaging product image to keep the visitors’ attention through loading further.
- Other value propositions such as ‘Top Deals’ or products that you have bought previously.
This fills the mobile page above the fold and shows deals because who doesn’t like value for money products? If it shows a product you bought before, it reinforces to the visitor that they are a customer of Amazon and plays on the Choice-Supportive cognitive bias. This gives the customer higher satisfaction in the products they purchased before.
The above is part of the psychology Amazon uses in their website marketing, however, the main point is that they choose to load what is most valuable to the customer. This reduces bounce rate and increases conversions.
To further emphasise the importance of website load speed, the Google Search team announced that speed would be a ranking signal for desktop searches in 2010 and as of July 2018 page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches too.
So how much money is my website really bleeding out?
To give you an example: you’re a business spending £10,000 per month on advertising with a 20% drop-off rate from ‘link clicks’ to ‘page views’. Assuming you have a CPC of £0.50, this gives us 20,000 clicks per month. Now with a drop-off rate of 20%, you would be losing 4000 potential customers – since the website didn’t load fast enough for them to stick around. Also assuming a conversion rate of 10% means you would have lost an additional 400 customers. Imagine losing 400 customers all for the lack of a few easy changes you can make on your website…
Tip: include link clicks and page views in your advertising columns to see how many people click your advert and never arrive at your website. Create a custom metric with the formula of Landing Page Views / Link Clicks to see how many people clicked and reached your website.
So by now, you’re probably thinking, ‘How can I increase the load speed of my website?’. You’ll be glad to know that the solution is easy to implement and you can quickly check your website speed with the Google Page Speed Insights tool. Here you can see exactly what your website’s speed is and it even gives you pointers as to what can be improved on your website to increase its speed.
4 Tips For Optimizing Your Website Load Speed:
- Optimize your images – Know when to use the appropriate file format for your images. Changing to a different file format can dramatically decrease the file size of an image.
- GIF is ideal for images with few colors like logos.
- JPEG is great for images with lots of colors and details like photographs.
- PNG is the choice when you need high-quality transparent images.
- SVG is the choice for logos and icons, that need to scale well for larger displays
- Don’t scale down images – Avoid using a larger image than you need just because you can set the width and height attributes of <img> elements in HTML. If you need a 100x100px image and you have a 700x700px image, use an image editor like Photoshop to resize the images to the required dimensions.
- Compress and optimise your content – Compressing your website content can greatly impact reducing load times. When using HTTP compression, all of your web page data is sent in a single smaller file instead of a request full of many different files.
- Minimize HTTP requests – When visiting a new web page, most of the page-loading time is spent downloading components of that page (e.g. images, stylesheets, and scripts). By minimizing the number of requests a web page needs to make, it will load faster.
By Joshua Simpson
Sounds too complicated?
We will optimise your website here at Opflow Media.
Simply tap the button below and schedule a call with one of our experts!
