How Poor Web Page Speed has Bad Impact on SEO and User Experience?

What is Webpage Loading Speed?

Web Page loading speed refers to the time that is taken by a webpage to fully load along with all its resources (images, media, and links).​ It is basically the time taken by the page to download and display the entire content on it in the browser window. It is measured in seconds. This is the easiest way to determine the loading speed of a webpage.

What is the Average Loading Speed of a webpage?

The average loading speed of a webpage is also known as the speed index, which measures how long you need to wait until most of the things on your browser screen is loaded. According to several statistics, it has been found that the average loading speed of a web page is 3 seconds on desktop and 5 seconds on mobile page. Sometimes, you might not be able to achieve the desired average speed required.

Factors That Can Lead To Poor Webpage Loading Time and Their Fixes

Various factors can cause your webpage to load slowly. These include:

#Factor 1: Too Much Flash Content

Although Flash can add interactivity to your website, it is also considerably bulky leading to a slow loading website.

Solution: If you want to your website to load quickly you must look for HTML 5 replacements of your Flash content.

#Factor2: Unoptimized Images

Your website might have several images on it. If these images are in high resolution or plenty in number, it can cause a massive increase in the size of your webpages, ultimately causing your website to load slowly. Image formats also play a crucial role. Using JPEG instead of PNG or GIF for larger files is more convenient and reduces loading time. Unoptimized images also eat up a lot of bandwidth, thereby increasing your costs.

Solution: You can use JPEG file format for images instead of PNG. Always check the image size while uploading it. The file size should ideally be lesser than 1 MB. Keep your file size as small as possible.

#Factor 3: Unclean Website Code

When the programmer codes your website, he could leave out several white spaces, empty new lines, inline stylings or comments. All this can increase the size of the website stylesheet.

Solution: Try to avoid or remove these unnecessary website elements to make the code more compact and reduce the file size considerably. Try to avoid creating multiple CSS stylesheet when you can make do in a single CSS stylesheet.

#Factor 4: HTTP Requests

If you have a lot of external files on your website, like images, JavaScript or CSS, the browser needs to perform several requests to load each of these onto the webpage causing a delay in the page load speed.

Solution: Minify your CSS and JavaScript files, this reduces the number of files that get downloaded at the user’s end.

#Factor 5: Too Many Advertisements

Although display advertisements are the best way to monetize high traffic websites, it is extremely essential to not overdo it. Too many ads can create a negative user experience. Ads are known to be media rich. Hence, it also sends extra HTTP requests and increases the page loading time considerably.

Solution: Use ads but in an appropriate number and only where you need to. This enriches the user experience and also helps avoid delay in page loading.

#Factor 6: Not Employing Caching Techniques

Caching is a technique which stores the frequently used data points into the cached memory and fetches it easily when subsequent requests are made of the same data. This speeds up the entire process and improves the performance of a website. HTTP, Database queries and even images can be cached.

Solution: Implementation of browser caching and server-side caching can be helpful in optimizing your web page loading speed.

#Factor 7: Ineffective Hosting Service

If all of the above problems are corrected and solutions are implemented by you but still you are facing a delayed page loading speed, it is highly likely that it might be due to bad hosting service. It might be that your web host’s resources are falling short to your website’s need.

Solution: If you are using shared hosting, then it would be better to upgrade to the cloud or a dedicated hosting plan for your website. Check with your hosting service if they provide a custom web server according to your need.

Webpage Loading Speed Affects The Bounce Rate

A website that takes too long to load has a higher bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. One should aim at the minimum most bounce rate for their websites for better conversions. Bounce Rate is inversely proportional to the website loading speed.

If your website loading speed is more, the bounce rate will be lesser but if your website loading speed is lesser or poor then the bounce rate will be more.  Research says that for a webpage which loads in under 2 seconds, the bounce rate is only 9% whereas for a webpage which takes over 3 seconds to load, the bounce rate jumps to a mammoth 38% by the time it hits 5 seconds. A good loading speed of your webpage can lead to lesser bounce rate as it boosts the user experience and increases conversion rates.

Use Below Free Tools to Check the Web page Loading Speed

1. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
2. https://gtmetrix.com/
3. https://tools.pingdom.com/
4. Google Analytics

Impact Of Poor Loading Speed Of Website On The Ranking

Search Engine Optimization or SEO forms one of the most important ways of digital marketing. It is a sure shot way to improve the ranking of your website. Although there are many ways to optimize your website for search engines, increased web page speed is definitely one of them. There are higher chances of your ranking going up if your web page speed is up to the mark.  Google has also indicated that page speed is one of signals used by its algorithms to rank the pages.

A slow loading page leads to slow crawling by the search engines. This means that search engines can crawl only a few pages of your website in their allocated crawling budget. This can affect your indexation in a negative way, making it vital to increase your web page speed to improve your ranking.

Good Loading Page Speed Boosts the User Experience

Page load time can either make or break the user experience with your website. According to a study, by improving a mobile site’s page speed from 8 seconds to 2 seconds the conversion rate could increase by 74%.

Conversion rates increase only when users like your website, your offerings and choose to purchase from you. This can happen only when they have a good and easy experience of navigating through your online website and services. They must stay on your website for a considerable amount of time. Higher page loading speed boosts user experience and good user experience means higher conversion rates.

Conclusion

The webpage loading speed can depend on various factors like optimized codes, images, content and a good hosting service. A difference of every millisecond can impact your website ranking and user experience. All of these factors are linked to conversion rates. In today’s competitive scenario, it is essential to make sure that you leave no stone unturned in making necessary modifications to help increase the speed of your website.