Get more users with website performance

Think about it. When was the last time you waited for a site to display? Or how about that streaming service you just subscribed that’s taking forever to play?

No one likes a slow, excruciatingly long and a twitchy experience. So if you’re looking at ways of getting more users or making a move on your competition, web performance’s your go to. As a customer of Get Pro Websites, we’ve got you covered. We bake web performance into every site we design, build and support.

Being fast isn’t the only thing that matters

Speed is only part of the picture. It’s also about how quickly users can interact with your site and how smoothly the site loads. Imagine making a call, getting though to the other side instantly but only to be put on hold for ages and when someone does answer, the line keeps cutting in and out. As users, we’d be super frustrated.

Check it out

It’s estimated that if page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, bounce rate increases 32%. This jumps to a jaw dropping 106% when a page takes 1 second to 6 seconds to display – Google

A frictionless user & customer experience makes a huge difference. It has a cascading effect and you generally get one shot at making a good impression. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

When Pinterest redesigned their site for performance, wait time dropped to 40%, there was a 15% increase in search engine rankings and a 15% rise of conversions to sign-ups.

On the flipside, the Financial Times saw a 4.9% drop over a 7 day window in the number of articles read when there was a one second delay. Over a period of 28 days, there were further drops in engagement.

If you are wondering how these tie together, Google’s Core Vitals are part of the mix. It’s a change in the way Google ranks sites. Core Vitals measure:

  • Speed – how quickly content loads and appears to the user (LCP)
  • Time – how soon a user can interact with the site (FID)
  • Stability – how the the layout of a page shifts as your site loads (CLS)

Breaking down the jargon

Google’s Core Vitals aren’t always the easiest to follow. Here’s a different way to think about it.

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) tracks the speed of text, images or video appearing your site’s page before users scroll for more content. If it’s slow to load, users see an empty screen and a blank screen isn’t useful.
  • First Input Delay (FID) keeps tabs on the time it takes for something to happen when a button or a link is clicked or tapped. If it takes too long, you’ll have a grumpy user or customer.
  • Cumulative Shift Layout (CLS) is all about visual stability. You’ve probably clicked on an image or link that you weren’t planning on just because the page shifted as it appeared in your web browser. “Content shifting” or “jank” is a sign that your website needs tuning.

Together, LCP, FID and CLS provide a glimpse into user experience for your website.

Getting started

While you might not be Pinterest or the Financial Times, you probably don’t want to be losing revenue, customers and users all because your website’s sluggish or it’s a disruptive experience when content shifts. So where do you begin? There are several tools out there like GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest that are free to use and they generate scorecards that tell you how well your site’s performing.

Let’s give it a go with a closeup. Here’s a recent snapshot of Get Pro Websites from PageSpeed Insights.

Google Pagespeed Get Pro Websites

Hitting a 100% is an aspiring target. Don’t get hung up getting the perfect score or grade. You want the right mix of a well-performing site and content that keeps your users engaged. Getting a high score depends on a whole bunch of factors ranging from the type of fonts used on the site to where the website’s hosted. If you’re doing it on your own, start with a goal of 90% and slowly work you way up. As a customer of Get Pro Websites, we do all the heavy lifting for you so that your website is firing on all cylinders and you can focus on what matters.

Wrapping it up

There are a myriad of factors that go into having a successful website. Web performance is just one of them. Start small and find the quick wins that help you improve user experience and work your way through the other opportunities.

If you need help or don’t quite know where to start, feel free to drop us a line. We’d love to work with you.