If you regularly add new pages to your website, a new report on the impact of page growth (and complexity) on page speed and the user experience may be something you want to check out. Focused primarily on an analysis of retail sites, it contains food for thought for anyone responsible for their company website, especially since Google considers load time a ranking factor for search.
The report by Radware is based on that company’s analysis of 100 retail websites. That analysis revealed that “a site that takes more than three seconds to load generates 22 percent fewer page views and has a 50 percent higher bounce rate than a site that loads in one second or less.” In short: the longer your website’s load time, the greater the chance that your potential customers/viewers will simply go away.
Some other thought-provoking points from the report:
- The time it takes for your page to show up in a visitor’s browser “affects every conceivable business metric, including page views, bounce rate, conversions, customer satisfaction, return visits.”
- Images and videos are areas where companies can streamline the load time by using an existing technique: “images comprise 50% of the average page’s total weight, but 35% of sites fail to compress images, a technique that could significantly reduce payload and streamline page rendering.”
- Sharper, better images can slow page load times: There’s an increase use of sharper and more detailed imagery, both of which can decrease page load times . . . As images already account for half of the average page’s total weight, conversion gains could be compromised by slow load times.”
The main findings of the study have been put into an easy to follow infographic. You can also download the full report if you’d like to dive in.