Website speed is absolutely critical to your online success and the loading time of your website should not be overlooked
There’s a direct correlation between the loading time of your website and bounce rate.
To better explain the term ‘bounce rate’ it might be good to picture a busy high street. Now, people will naturally pop into a few different stores and browse around. As the store owner, your job is to engage the visitors to your store with relevant items and encourage them to spend as much time as possible in your store, because there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time a person spends in a store with how much they actually spend in terms of total order value.
What is a high bounce rate?
Now, picture a store owner that is frustrated as there are plenty of customers walking into his store, but as soon as they walk through the front door, they turn around and leave, or perhaps browse for a few seconds then decide there’s nothing relevant for them – so exit.
This means that the store owner has high traffic but low engagement; and therefore people aren’t buying anything.
This metaphor explains the term high bounce rate.
However, when it comes to a website or online shop, it’s even easier to leave the store, as it’s simply a click of the mouse with barely any effort required.
Having a high bounce rate is what will cripple your online business, and one of the leading reasons for a high bounce rate is that of slow loading speed. Indeed, it has been found that 40% of visitors will leave your website if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load and 53% of mobile customers.
In an increasingly impatient online world where people today are bombarded with content choices and overwhelmed with options… ensuring a fast loading speed of your website is just as important as branding or even Search Engine Optimisation.
User Experience
User Experience (UX) design is however equally critical. Whilst it might not technically improve the speed of your website – it will increase the speed at which users navigate the website.
This will lead to an improvement in a number of key metrics such as engagement, bounce rate, and conversion from browser to buyer.
When we think about user experience design, we often think to web design, however it’s not just about aesthetic design – it is equally to do with functionality and creating interactive websites that engage users.
In the early stages of web development, it can be hard to get the feedback necessary to consider the flow of how users will engage with your website.
It’s also vital to get as much feedback from as many people as possible in terms of the ease of use of the planned design and whether they interact with the structure in a sensical way or if it is too disorganised.
In summary, speed is absolutely critical to your online success and the loading time of your website should not be overlooked. Afterall, you don’t want to put all your effort into creating a beautiful shop that nobody visits because it’s too slow.
