High-Speed Websites Convert Better

It is mostly about overall feeling of trustworthiness that we perceive on the very subconscious level. Successful website owners tend to have more money for optimising website scripts and for renting a decent web server.

On the other hand, slowness may be related to poor maintenance, crappy development, using of cheap content management system or outdated web hosting systems. There may be many different objective reasons which visitors even have no idea of on conscious level, but the symptoms are the very same - web page is just too slow.

Watch Them Dropping Off
If a page loads slower than 1 second, visitors start perceive it as poorly responsive and their natural flow between pages becomes distracted. Slower sites just feel different, they seem suspicious and visitors trust them less. Users tend to forget what they are up against in the next view and what they saw on the previous page. The longer the delay, the more visitors start wandering around and lose focus.

Judging by our decade-long development experience, the most critical is a 2-second threshold, if page loading time exceeds it, page abandonment goes up very fast from there. This is also supported by KISSmetric statistics. Their suggestion is that with 3-second delay about 40% of users will click "Back" button or just leave the page in some other way. They don't explain exactly how these results are collected and calculated, however, in our real life experience, the problem with slow websites seems to be real.

Twisted A/B Tests for Speed
The essential of comparing different elements in page is that they are generated in very similar conditions. Traffic level, time of the day and even weather outside must be the same to get any reliable comparison results. Unfortunately, page speed depends more on technical parameters of scripting, web hosting software, server hardware and web host network parameters, which are often too hard to duplicate and it makes running two parallel websites impossible.

Secondly, benefits of faster website are so obvious that if webmaster is able to optimise website and make it just a little bit faster, there is no incentive to continue running slower version of the page to compare the conversion data.

When the option of running parallel variants was not available, we compared just conversion data before and after, instead. There were three major parameters, which improved significantly: duration of visit, number of pages browsed during one visit and, most importantly, conversion rates. 

Browsing Style Adjusts to Content
We also found out that, in different formats, there are various expectations on page loading speed. For interesting infographics, there is more tolerance to wait for a page to load. The same goes for videos. On the other hand, for simpler text format pages, like articles, blog posts and products, impatience builds up faster. The latter are formats, which are usually flipped in faster manner and therefore, the loading speed of pages becomes more important.

Not All Users Are the Same
Expectations towards page speed vary among different users, too. People using slower connections and older computers are more patient because their overall browsing habits are different.

Slower Connection Creates Tolerance

We tested users in rural areas and/or mobile network for our websites. There are some differences in browsing habits, which make them more tolerant to slow pages. For example, users with very slow connection are using their right mouse click and "Open link in new tab" to continue reading the current page and proceed to the next tab after it is fully loaded (by looking when the hourglass disappears from top of browser tab).

Sure, this is such a rare example which just illustrates differences in user habits. It is good to be aware of extremes, but try to design your website for average user.

Check the Speed of Your Direct Competitors
Website speed is relative. If your site loads in 3 seconds and all your competitors have websites loading twice as long, in 6 seconds, you are faster. Today, most websites' loading times are between 0.6-1.5 seconds. If your site is in this range, you don't need to worry much - there is nothing wrong with loading time. If your pages are slower, there is a high risk that you may have been losing visitors because of slow website. The easiest way to measure page loading speed is to use Pingdom Website Speed test which shows you most troubling bottlenecks that delay page loading and impede user experience.

Optimise Pages And Get Faster Web Hosting
In the next article, we will take a closer look at the most likely bottlenecks that slow down pages. Meanwhile, you may also browse through the list of faster web hosting providers. Hosting website to descent web server is, in most cases, the most effective way to get better loading times for your website.