We all know that website speed is important for the customer’s overall experience. But could a slow speed be costing you sales? 

The short answer: Yes.

According to Search Engine Journal, almost 70% of customers say website speed affects their willingness to buy a product. In fact, if your website takes more than three seconds to load, over half of your site visitors will leave. 

Site speed and SEO

Not only does your site speed affect customer experience, it can also affect your SEO. This is because Google favors sites that have a fast load time on both mobile and desktop devices. A slow site may also affect the speed that Google is able to crawl your website. 

Even as little as a one second delay could cost you an 11% loss of page views (via HubSpot). Since SEO is such a crucial component of your site’s sales, it’s important to make sure there are no roadblocks in the way.

The real cost of a slow website

How does a slow site translate into dollars? Fast Company shares how one second of lag time on Amazon could result in a loss of $1.6 billion in sales every year.  

Even more, an article from Neil Patel shows that online stores making an average of $100,000 per day, could lose $2.5 million in sales each year from a one second loading delay.

We know that every site isn’t bringing in millions (or billions) each year. But calculate these percentages with your store’s revenue. Even if you’re running a small or mid-sized e-commerce site, you’ll see what a difference even a second can make with your bottom line. 

Steps to improve your site speed 

The first step to improve your site speed is to run a few diagnostic tests.  You can check out our recommendations here.

After you’ve run the tests, you will have a better idea of the actions you should take to improve site performance. We’ve put together a guide for general improvements you should make to improve your Magento site and WordPress site.

Some of these improvements include: 

• Use a server optimized for your website platform
• Merge CSS and Javascript files
• Optimize cache
• Compress images 
• Defer assets or use a CDN

As always, if you have additional questions on how to improve your website speed, we’d love to talk. You can schedule your free consultation here.