Without question, the internet changed the world. The global system of interconnected computers that has its roots in the 1970s ARPANET network became publicly available in 1993 when CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, chose to put the Web in the public domain. That led to the World Wide Web, an information system enabling resources to get accessed online, becoming available for all. And from that moment, the way people interacted and transacted with others changed forever.
Websites increase convenience to previously unimaginable heights, but they also brought the average human attention span to around eight seconds, making it one second shorter than the attention span of a goldfish. The rise of technology has made people crave things faster, and concerning websites, speed has evolved to much more than common customer demand. It now serves various other purposes. It is an integral part of the user experience and can influence profitability by boosting conversion rates and search engine rankings. We’ve seen this across almost every single sector of the internet. From gaming to payments to even simply just load speeds as a whole. For example, you can look at casinos with instant withdrawals to see how much speed plays a factor in gaining repeat business in the digital sphere and the competitive edge it provides. Moreover, you can look at the rise of streaming video games to show just how far we have come over the past 3 decades. PC gaming has come from a relatively primitive form of video gaming, to seeing millions of players fighting simultaneously at lightning speeds across Apex Legends, Fortnite and League of Legends.
Below, we rattle off three reasons why speed matters in presenting one’s business on the Web.
It Is the First Impression Made
When a website loads fast, visitors are instantly happy. Speed and functionality get immediately connected to a sense of reliability and professionalism, which, of course, gets linked to trust, confidence, and efficacy. As the saying goes, first impressions last well beyond that moment. And that is something that gets owed to a phenomenon called the primacy effect, which means that in a sequence of things, people are most likely to remember the first one.
Per one online pool, 79% of shoppers will not return to a site that has trouble loading. Moreover, 40% of people will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Going by a test Amazon ran, they would lose $1.6 billion yearly if they slowed down the speed of their service by one second. Therefore, it has been proven that slowness kills conversion dramatically.
Google Search Rankings
We touched upon this above. While a given speed dramatically improves the user experience, it is also a vital factor in search engine optimization. As likely everyone knows, Google is, without contest, the king regarding methods people use to scour the Web. It has an over 90% market share, and one of its ranking criteria is speed. Faster sites/platforms rank higher on Google. That means that they are more easily discoverable by the world. Google’s Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics measuring loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. So, if a business enhances its site speed, that will undoubtedly aid its Google Search ranking. And that should lead to better overall success.
It Can Have Long-Term Negative Effects
We have established that lag can produce a near-immediate drop-off in visitor interest and a high bounce rate. Over time, that can create negative word of mouth, probably resulting in dissatisfied visitors not returning to a website due to their previous poor experience. Hence, it is unlikely that these customers will ever sign up for a newsletter or create content that links back to a business. The latter also affects SEO, hurting a brand’s credibility in the long term. The more unhappy visitors something creates, the more the odds of generating referrals fall, and the more damage a company suffers.
So, speed is the name of the game, and if a business entity wants to remain viable in today’s marketplace, it must focus on it.
