TLDR:
Most marketers agree that slow load times aren’t good for conversions, but it’s not a high priority for them to address. Improving site speed is a complex process.
According to some new figures provided in a report from Unbounce, many marketers aren’t placing priority on improving site speed, and they do this knowing full well it affects conversions.
During a recent industry get-together, Unbounce evaluated more than 180 webpages using “Test My Site,” a Google tool. What they uncovered from their testing was that only about 15% of the companies satisfied Google’s criteria for mobile page loading time.
Following the testing, Unbounce issued out two surveys at the same time. They wanted to know consumer attitudes on webpage load time, and they wanted to know marketers’ attitudes.
In the consumer parallel survey, two-thirds of consumers reported that they would wait an average of four seconds for a page to load, although Google claims three seconds is the ideal maximum.
A large amount of survey respondents said that slow-moving websites were bad news. They indicated that if a website should be slow, it was likely the last time they would visit it.
The results presented that a person’s sex mattered; women had a tendency to be a bit more impatient than men in this capacity.
An interesting data point to take away from this report is that consumers would rather have fast load speeds, even if it was at the expense of fancy animations, graphics, or videos.
More than half of the respondents would be none the wiser if a company’s page loaded slowly. They incorrectly place the blame on their ISP in many cases.
In the marketer parallel survey, an overwhelming majority responded that slow load times affected their conversion rates. This is interesting in light of the fact that many marketers strive for the ideal three second wait time, but making a page’s load time faster was a low priority for marketers.
Some marketers in the survey were trying to better their page speed. They used a wide swath of techniques, including optimizing various aspects of their website, as well as conducting speed audits and utilizing a Content Delivery Network.
Marketers should care about this report. According to the data in it, improving site performance was a low priority because doing so is a complex process. Marketers should also care about this report because it starts to get at what the actual opportunity cost is for failing to improve site speed.
Original article from MarketingLand on 25 January 2019.
