Having an online website is a huge part of the success of a business. However, if you want to yield its benefits, your web design should work the right way. Otherwise, your website will not be able to fulfill its purpose. For this reason, work on the performance of your website so it will be up to spec. Keep in mind that a website that loads fast is in good standing, and the page load speed determines whether visitors will continue browsing your web pages or not.
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In terms of the placement in the search results pages, an underperforming website is likely to fall down the rankings. This aligns with Google’s mission statement that makes sure that it can meet the needs of the users. With this, you want Google to look at your website favourably. Some things to help you acquire the most traffic, keep customers buying, and improve the performance of your website are:
- Compress Images
- Minify HTML and Styles
- Reduce HTTP Requests
- Use Static Cache
- Apply a CDN
- Utilize CSS Font-Display
- Select the Right Web Hosting
- Optimize the Database in Your CMS
- Use Prefetching Methods
User Experience and Website Performance
The moment a user visits your site, how it performs starts to impact the experience of the visitor. There should be no margin for error in terms of web design Brisbane performance, considering that the attention span of people nowadays is continuously ever-shrinking. In fact, online users expect a page to load within two seconds or less.
In all the efforts you put in your web design to attract your target audience and then leave your site before they even find what they are looking for. In other words, visitors abandon a site, not because the content is uninteresting or useful, but rather it is poor-performing and slow-loading. As a result, you will have an alarming decline in traffic.
Why Your Website Must Perform Well
Here are some reasons why your website must perform in the best way it can be:
Your bounce rate can increase
The bounce rate of a website is an analysis of how many people visit a webpage and how many navigate away from it. Depending on the purpose of your website, a good bounce rate is within the range of 30%-50%. There are many reasons people decide not to continue interacting with your site, for example, they find the content boring, uninformative, or is below par. These bouncing site visitors are lost opportunities.
A few tips to reduce your bounce rate:
- Know your buyer persona and find out why visitors are leaving your site early. Build a solid strategy around this information.
- Rework your web pages and overall web design for a greater user experience.
- Use interactive content to keep engagement high.
Speed affects conversions
Website speed is so important that people are likely to abandon your page if it does not load in three seconds. According to statistics, it equates to 40% of lost visitors. For example, even if you receive 100,000 views, you could lose 40,000 visitors for the reason that your site did not load quickly. So, aim for 0-3 second load time to increase conversions on your site.
Remember that some web pages are more important than others. Make sure your home page, login, and checkout load faster. The product category pages should also have faster load speed, as they impact sales. Make these pages fast because they come with high consumer-intent traffic.
Users today have a short attention span
Different businesses work on their web design to ensure the user experience, load speed, and overall visitor journey is seamless. A few seconds on your site is all it takes for a visitor to decide whether to stay or not. Therefore, make every effort on your website to make sure your visitors can navigate it easily and in a timely manner.
Not all traffic leads to conversions
While you want to acquire as much traffic as possible on your website, you will also want to make these users stick around your website and enjoy your content or end up buying. With that, do not let the figures alone excite you. You should also assess what users are doing when visiting your website and see to it that you accommodate their needs.
Underperforming site can lead to bad word-of-mouth
Word-of-mouth is considered a traditional form of marketing, but it is still powerful. If someone had a pleasurable experience while exploring your site, they would likely share such moments with other people. On the other hand, a bad experience can generate the opposite result, affecting your traffic and conversion rate.
The performance of your website can hinder the user experience. Users may be met with a spinning circle or a blank screen when opening your page. Often, you cannot control these instances because the user may have limited connectivity or is in an isolated area. However, if the culprit is that there is too much going on your web pages; thus, impacting the load speed, you will likely get frustrated visitors.
Sometimes, your web design suffers for whatever reason. All you need is to take a proactive approach to make your website perform well and avoid tainting your reputation.
Mobile rules the present
Desktop computers are not dead, but you cannot deny the fact that more and more people are using mobile devices. People use mobile to conduct online searches and visit websites more than on desktops.
Google sees the importance of mobile search, causing it to introduce mobile-first indexing and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Also, 65% of digital media time is brought on by mobile devices. Therefore, your web design must be able to meet the demands of mobile users today, as these users can quickly move on to other sites that can cater to their needs.
You can compare building a website to constructing a brick-and-mortar store. If your store is looking old and takes forever for them to find anything, then your potential customers will leave your shop and never return. The same thing applies to your online presence. So, spend time improving your web design and make the necessary fixes and adjustments. Do this sooner than later to prevent any problems that may hurt your traffic and sales.