The B2B SaaS Marketing Blog

Your Site Load Speed Dictates Your Conversion Rates

by 

PbS Staff

Last updated: September 3rd, 2014

Site load speed is the velocity at which your website opens to visitors, and today, the faster the better.  Visitors to your site have a tendency to click-through if your page doesn’t open to essential information within a few seconds.  In many cases, 2-3 seconds is the limit of visitors’ patience.  Conversions are lost because visitors lose interest before they can view your products.

A Matter of Milliseconds

Evidence suggests that every millisecond – one-tenth of a second – consumers wait for your website to load generates a 1% loss of sales.  Multiplied over the course of an hour, potential lost sales, revenues and profits – the benefits of conversion – can be enormous.  Equally as important is the possibly permanent loss of consumer interest.

Because once someone clicks-thru, they could be gone forever.  Gone also could be:

• your opportunity to interest potential customers in whatever your eCommerce site has to offer,
• a frequent occurrence if a website is as little as 1/2-second too slow.

And in such cases, all your site-preparation –

• the keywords, headlines, images and calls-to-action (CTA) you worked so diligently to formulate, organize and display –
• may never be viewed, because slow site load speed convinced visitors to look elsewhere.

Your return on investment (ROI) is then doubly minimized.  You lose money not only through lost sales, but also on what you spent making the site visitor-ready. Not only will you require a site load speed

• sufficiently fast to hold visitors’ attention, but also
• sufficiently scalable to accommodate traffic spikes potentially numbering in the millions.

Inbound marketing agencies like Powered by Search (PbS) recognize the utility of speedier site-loading for search engine optimization (SEO) and improved conversion rates.  WordPress (WP)  EverCache software is one of the most reliable providers of these services.

Improving ROI and Conversions

Site-optimization through responsive web design (RWD) leads to increased ROI and a higher conversion rate.  One reason is the enhanced load speed that results from RWD, which allows greater mobile access and connections with all digital devices.  Clients report increased traffic of as much as 32% following a PbS audit, resulting in faster site loading, more conversions-per-visit and better ROI.

In this regard, the correlation between:

• quicker site load time and
• a higher incidence of visitor interest and return
• compels developing faster load processes to remain competitive.

Brand engagement also improves when consumers access your content more quickly. The message is presented to them with minimal delay.  Experiencing fewer time-consuming hassles accessing your content:

• visitors will be more likely to respond positively to your messages,
• adding to conversions,  They may also be
• more inclined to recommend your website to friends and colleagues,
• potentially expanding your present customer base.
• Increased traffic will improve your Google SEO-rank,
• drawing more attention to your webpage.

These benefits can be attributed to faster load speed.  Conversion rates increases when you serve visitors the content they seek with minimal delay.  Average order value (AOV) also grows with speedier page loading, as visitors have access to a wider range of products and services, in a shorter time, encouraging them to additional purchases.

Conclusion

Delayed load time is a major reason site visitors leave your webpage and are reluctant to return.

Enhanced site-load speed represents a major development in online marketing, providing useful site experiences by getting potential customers to your messages and products sooner.  Diminished site-load speed challenges visitors’ interest, frequently causing them to simply leave your site in search of one more receptive to their presence.

Recognizing that a significant increase in sales conversions is a benefit of faster load-time, WP web software creates quickly-loading websites responsive to all browsers.  WP’s EverCache assures instantaneous scalability should your site experience a major traffic spike due to visitor interest in its content, with demonstrated capabilities of serving in excess of 100 million requests in 12 hours.

PBS audits make your webpage more responsive to a wider variety of visitor traffic, driving up site conversions while generating improved ROI. Let us know in the comments below if you’re interested in getting your site audited! And don’t forget to come out to InboundCon, our big digital marketing conference, on September 18 for even more awesome conversion rate optimization tips and tricks.

If you missed our InboundCon, don’t miss out on our Free 25 minute Marketing Assessment with us.