Speed is an important factor in pretty much all aspects of life, especially in business where time is money. This factor now plays a major role in how Google is rating websites. If your site is slow, do not expect a decent position in the search results… Instead of being in the first 2,3 pages on Google, you’ll end up being somewhere on the 32nd page, which means that your potential clients won’t be able to find you. The final result will be, no clients, no money, no business..
Google’s SEO guidelines can be pretty harsh, but if you want to succeed online, you have no other option then to obey the king of the web and do whatever is required to attract more visitors.
If you think a little bit about website loading speed you’ll see that it makes sense because people are always in hurry, they can’t and won’t wait forever to finally see your site fully loaded. Numerous studies have shown that online, people are making decisions very quickly, in a few seconds, which clearly shows the importance of having a seriously fast website!
The overall conclusion is that in the blink of eye, you can either lose or gain a new customer.
More about the speed
Loading speed is measured from the moment when a visitor click on your website URL until the point where your page is completely loaded. Loading time under 1 second is perfect, between 2 and 3 seconds is considered as decent.
For the most accurate measurement we recommend Pingdom speed test and Google Page Speed Insights.
Google Page Speed Insights is something you should focus on, because the test score will have direct influence on your Google rank. GPSI measures the speed of your site and checking the desktop & mobile usability. Perfect GPSI score is 100/100, a decent score would be somewhere around 90/100 which is good enough to boost your SEO.
We’ve seen many times that even the slightest change in GPSI score can result in more visitors and more business for our clients. When people ask us is it worth it? We say absolutely, it’s worth it and also required if you want to go few steps higher toward online success.
WordPress Speed Optimization
With proper approach, WordPress performance can be increased to its maximum. When we say maximum, it means that some sites can reach 100/100 GPSI score while other ones maximum score could be around 80/100. It all depends on how good a shape your site is in, how many features you have on the site, is the hosting server fast enough, is theme properly coded etc..
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you need a new website made from scratch in order to meet the requirements for perfection because even the decent score (85/100, 90/100) is satisfactory and can bring positive results. The bottom line is that most of the sites online do not meet the speed requirements, many people and businesses simply don’t know anything about the speed and its influence. This gives you an opportunity to beat your competitors online by optimizing your website.
“Web performance is user experience. Fast page load time builds trust in your site; it yields more returning visitors, more users choosing your site over a competitor’s site, and more people trusting your brand. Users expect pages to load in two seconds, and after three seconds, up to 40% of users will abandon your site. Similar results have been noted by major sites like Amazon, who found that 100 milliseconds of additional page load time decreased sales by one percent, and Google, who lost 20% of revenue and traffic due to half a second increase in page load time. “ – Forbes.com