How to Improve Website Page Load Speed – Website load speed is a very important topic when it comes to SEO best practices. The time it takes for the content on a page to appear also influences aspects such as the user experience (UX) and the marketing funnel .
Therefore, brands that want to attract more visitors to their websites, convert them into leads, transform them into customers and, finally, build loyalty cannot ignore the loading time of their pages.
A bad user experience affects how long the user spends on the site and drops important metrics, which affects SERP ranking. The person feels frustrated when entering a page where the content does not load properly and gives up browsing.
Understand more details about website loading speed, why it is important in digital marketing strategies and learn how to measure and reduce page opening time.
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What is website Page load speed?
Website Page load speed is the time it takes for a page to fully display your content on mobile or desktop. That is, it is the period between the access that the user makes and the display of all the texts, videos and images present there.
Although this also depends on factors such as the quality of the user’s internet connection, the websites themselves influence, positively or negatively, the loading time of their pages.
In the digital environment, it is common to come across websites that present a blank screen when accessed. And the content starts to appear little by little – titles, texts, photos and videos, according to the weight of each one.
When this happens, it means that the site is slow, as the page elements do not appear as soon as the access is performed.
In opposite situations, in which all content is shown within seconds or milliseconds after access, it obviously means that the loading time is fast.
This speed is essential for several aspects in the relationship with visitors, leads and customers, as we will see below.
Why is website loading speed important?
The slower the loading speed of a website, the better for users and, above all, for the brand responsible for the page.
One of the reasons has to do with optimizing websites for search engines, since loading time is one of the ranking factors for search engines like Google.
Among the numerous criteria that the company uses to position pages in its results is the site’s loading speed.
The smaller it is, the more Google will understand that the domain offers a good user experience and the better the page will be ranked. This, in turn, improves organic search .
Speaking of user experience (UX), it is also impacted by how long the site takes to fully display its content.
The longer the wait, the worse the reading experience for visitors, who will not have access to all information on the page quickly.
This can cause the abandonment of the page, which results in high bounce rates , that is, visitors who enter the site and leave it shortly afterwards, without performing any interaction.
As a result, the brand will have more difficulty attracting visitors to its pages, keeping them browsing the site or inducing them to sign up for newsletters or download content, for example.
Without these interactions, a business cannot convert visitors into leads and will have even more trouble getting new customers.
So, the faster a website loads:
- Better will be your position in Google;
- More positive will be the user experience;
- The greater the likelihood of retaining visitors and converting them into leads and customers.
How to measure website load speed?
Research indicates that the ideal page load time is up to 5 seconds, and Google’s own experts have already indicated the period of 2 seconds as the best performance.
This indicates that the speed of a website displaying its entire content should be as fast as possible, to avoid user frustration and also to show search engines that the page brings positive experiences to visitors.
To measure the speed of a website, you can use tools such as:
- Google PageSpeed Insights , which suggests improvements to desktop and mobile versions of pages;
- GTm etrix , a tool that brings reports on site speed and suggestions to speed up time;
- Lighthouse , which can be used as a Google Chrome extension or inserted into command lines, to audit websites and show page speed and quality.
How to improve website load speed?
There are different ways to speed up page loading speed.
One involves reducing the size of images (weight), as they influence the time it takes the page to display the entire content.
It is important to optimize photos, illustrations and other types of images:
- Reduce the size of images with resources like Tinypng or Optimus ;
- Upload the images in the formats indicated for the website, that is, in the appropriate height and width proportions for the page;
- Use image formats like JPEG 2000, JPEG XR and WebP instead of JPEG and PNG, which are heavier.
Another action that helps speed up the display of content on websites is creating AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages). These are open source pages that speed up the loading of sites on mobile devices and can be generated via plugins, such as AMP for WP .
Finally, one more action that contributes to improving the loading of sites is to use responsive pages, which do not need to change the URL to work on mobile devices or on desktop.
This way, the same email address will be displayed to users, regardless of the device used to access the page