Is your website slowing down sales conversions?
The sheer power of the internet and the volume of information that is now so readily available online means that when most people begin their search for products or services your website might be their first impression of your company.
Research has proven that people will only wait 3 seconds for a website to load before abandoning their search. This demonstrates how important it is that your website performance is health checked on a regular basis to ensure it is loading quickly, user expectations are met, and your enquiry and sales objectives are met.
If you suspect your website is slowing down your enquiry form submission or e-commerce sales Purpose Media can help by offering support and guidance to improve performance.
This could involve rectifying issues that are affecting load speed or if your website is really out of date helping you scope out the specification of a brand new updateable or e-commerce website. We can also provide digital marketing expertise to ensure your website attracts the right audiences.
For the benefit of our ‘teccie’ readers here is a run-down of the most important factors to consider. And, more importantly, if you are not a Purpose Media client – these are the hygiene factors that your existing web developer should be tracking on your behalf and reporting back on to ensure performance is optimised on an ongoing basis and your website loads quickly.
It really does make a difference how your website is hosted. If it is on a shared server with thousands of other global websites if one or more of the other websites should get a surge in traffic the impact could slow your website. The content on these other websites and their purpose could also affect your credibility with search engines.
At Purpose Media we offer a range of options from having your own dedicated server to being one of very few select number of websites we host on shared servers that are cloud based and dedicated to us as a full service agency.
Without getting too technical we design websites based on our knowledge of the algorithms search engines use to crawl your content. Our experts know how to code and design page layouts to ensure they are visible and will be indexed for key search terms and phrases. We will also ensure the SEO tools that are in-built into the CMS will signpost people to your content. This includes ensuring plugins, page errors, coding scripts and tracking logs are not impeding performance.
It can be tempting to upload media files, such as images and videos that are quite large. When we develop websites we design them and provide training to users to ensure files can be uploaded and accessed by browsers in the most effective way. This means files are optimised and compressed to decrease their size and, therefore, improve your loading times.
There are other much more technical factors that can impact speed and performance, but hopefully we have highlighted why load speed is so important.
Website load speed is now a Google ranking factor for both desktop and mobile sites. If you don’t maintain your website and this affects speed performance, the visibility of your website on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) may decrease, leading to lower traffic levels.
If you would like us to carry out a health check on your website please get in touch for a FREE no obligation discussion.