Have you ever entered a website that takes ages to load its pages? It is very frustrating, isn´t it? It is almost the same disappointment as waiting too long for an order in a restaurant. In this text, we are going to explain why it happens and how to avoid having this problem on your website.

The speed of a website or 'load time' is the time it takes to load and display the full content of a page or a group of pages. It is a key element for website performance as it affects directly user experience, site traffic, and also search engine rankings.

A website needs to provide a good image for the business. When loading a homepage, it has to match the user's expectations and deliver a great first impression by being fast and relevant. If it doesn't happen, users will give up, close the page, and probably won’t come back. Alongside a poor user experience, a slow website will also get a high bounce rate.

Bounce rate is the percentage of users who visit the website and leave it (bounce) before having any interaction. According to Google's research if a page loads from up to 3 seconds, the probability of bounce increases 32%. But if it loads up to 5 seconds, then this rate can increase up to 90%.

The speed of a website also impacts SEO performance. Google takes 'load time' into account to rank websites. If you want your website to be ranked in a good position in the Google Search, it is vital to provide access to relevant content with a speedy loading time.

Keep it in mind: speed matters...a lot! At Website 365, our Design and Development teams work together to optimise the websites we create, ensuring a good speed score to deliver users the best experience possible. Talk to us if you need a specialist team looking after your website project.