Page speed is important to users because, well, faster pages are more efficient. Per a recent Kissmetrics infographic, if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, over a quarter of users will click away. Mobile users expect speed, too. In the same survey, 73% of users reported visiting a website that loaded too slow. Page speed also affects conversion rate.
It’s official: Google announced that page speed will be a ranking factor in its mobile-first index. But what does that mean? There’s no beating around the bush anymore: you should work on making your site as fast and accessible as possible.
You can evaluate your page speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights. PageSpeed Insights Speed Score incorporates data from CrUX (Chrome User Experience Report) and reports on two important speed metrics: First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOMContentLoaded (DCL).
What can lower your page speed?
- Your host: you get what you paid. In the long run, a cheap offer can damage your page speed. Pick the right host that fit to your business size.
- Too large images: images which are too heavy to load can really lower your page speed. It is often due to extra data included in the comments or to a lack of compression. Prefer PNG for images that do not require high details like logos and JPEG for photos.
- External embedded media: external media like videos are highly valuable but can largely lower you load time. To gain some load time, host the videos on your own server.
- Unoptimized browser, plugins and app: you should test your website on all browsers since they do not load your site in the same way. Moreover, apps like Flash can seriously lower your page speed.
- Too much ads: more than just bothering your visitors, lots of ads have the drawback to slow down your page speed.
- Your theme: some highly designed themes containing a lot of effects can penalized your load page.
- Widgets: some social buttons or comment areas can have an impact of your page speed.
- Double-barreled code: if your HTML/CSS is not efficient or too dense, it will lower your page speed.
