Your Website: Speed Counts!
29 Jun 2010, 9:24 a.m.
When setting up a website for your business, you have a lot of ground to cover. You need to include an eye-catching yet professional design, service and contact information, website security, easy updating ability, and more.
By squeezing all of these features into a site, many businesses sacrifice loading time. Ironically, this is one of the most important factors in customer interest!
The term “loading time” means the time between when a customer clicks on a link and when a page appears on the screen, complete and ready to use. During the loading time, your customer is staring at a blank screen. Obviously, this is not what people like to do.
Google recently did a study on loading time and customer retention. The company tracked certain users, recording how much time each of their searches took and how many searches they did. It did not surprise anyone that a longer loading time resulted in people making fewer searches.
The big surprise was how little extra time it took to reduce the number of times people used the service. Google found that customers searched less often when the loading time was increased by just over half a second. In fact, there was even a reaction when the loading time was increased by only one tenth of a second. This means that even the slightest increase in loading time will decrease the number of visits to a company's website, and consequently the number of customers a company wins over. Even a fraction of a second counts, when attracting new customers.
What's more, even a fraction of a second counts when keeping existing customers. Not only did customers reduce the number of times they used the site after the first week of increased loading time, they kept decreasing the number of times they used the site every week after that.
This is very bad news for businesses that don't minimize their loading time. It means that a one-time increase in loading time will continue to drive customers away weeks after the increase has been made. It makes sense. As was mentioned before, no one likes staring at a blank screen. When a customer sits in front of a screen, bored and frustrated, they have a bad experience every time a slow business's site loads. Over time the bad experiences accumulate, and the customer gets a very negative impression. Eventually that customer drifts away.
Long loading times are bad enough on laptops or home computers. On mobile websites they're even worse. To begin with, mobile phones aren't as quick as personal computers, so the loading times will be even longer. Added to that is the fact that mobile phones are used on the street. When people are walking around, there are myriad distractions ready to take their attention away.
They may even be walking down the street and see another business in the time it takes a website to load. Why wait when they can walk right in? Even if there aren't any competitors in range, trying to get a slow site to load when walking around increases a user's frustration exponentially. It's annoying enough to stare at a blank screen. Staring at it while trying to walk a dog, keep kids from acting out, converse with business acquaintances, or have fun with friends is much worse. This can lead to the kind of bad experience that makes customers avoid a business for a long time.
Mobile sites give customers the exact opposite experience. They're designed for use on mobile phones, so they load fast and give customers all the essential information right away. Not only does this let potential clients get all the information they need to walk into a business at any time, it makes using a site a painless, welcoming experience. While 'a painless, welcoming experience' might seem touchy-feely, remember the results of the study. Even mildly unpleasant experiences peel away more and more customers over time.
A correctly designed mobile web site, however, can give a business a tremendous advantage over its competitors. Not only does it help retain existing customers, by giving them access to the site from their mobile phones, it will pick up new customers over time as other, less mobile-compatible, sites drive them away. That means more new customers, and more sales, every week.
P.S. Are you wondering what your company website looks like on mobile phones? Mobile Web Up offers a free "Mobile Readiness" evaluation. We'll go over your site, tell you what works and what doesn't on mobile, and even make screenshots to show you how your site looks on mobile devices. It's easy - put in your request now.
