PageSpeed Insights – How important is a good performance score for your website?
What is PageSpeed Insights?
PageSpeed Insights (by Google) is one method to track and analyse the speed of web pages, amongst other things.
How quickly a web page loads, significantly affects the overall performance of a website. If you have not stopped to consider this point, you should be aware that research has proven that if a web page takes over 3 seconds to load, more than half of your audience has already left the site.
PageSpeed Insights is a combination of tools and research gathered by Google that report on the performance of each page on your website. These tools report on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and also provide suggestions on how that page may be improved.
Note: Not every suggestion made by PageSpeed Insights will make a radical difference to your website's load speed, some are suggestions that may affect other aspects of your site. But in general, a higher score means better load speeds and performance.
Some fixes will be easy and can be completed by yourself. However, some may be more complex and need to be addressed by your web developer.
Why Do We Use PageSpeed Insights?
Your page speeds impact more than how quickly the content appears on a web visitor’s screen. It is important to note that your page load speeds also affects your SEO. In fact, your page speed is a direct ranking factor. This means that if your pages are loading slowly, they are less likely to be ‘Ranked’ well by google.
Note: There are MANY other factors that also affect your Page Ranking, like; keyword content, inbound links, Web Standards, traffic, time-on-site and much more.
PageSpeed Insights allows you ‘insights’ to uncover what is preventing your pages from loading efficiently, and how this may be improved.
Initially, Google will ask for your page URL (i.e.website address or page address), and from this will calculate your overall page speed out of 100. While the score of your website is a guide, the recommendations that page speed insights will give you to increase your web page loads are far more valuable.
The majority of the suggestions will point towards the minimisation of different page resources. It may be that you need to reduce the number of fonts used or the size of scripts and frameworks for each page. Reducing these excessive resources will allow your viewers to have an easy, streamlined experience when browsing through content on your web page.
Well optimised web pages are imperative for helping potential customers interact with your company’s website while helping you grow your visibility in the search engines.
How Important Is Good Performance?
It’s true we have noted that a slow web page is going to deter customers from staying on your website. But, a fast loading website is not going to guarantee instant sales and great Page Rankings.
Your website needs to have a good page speed (especially your mobile site), but also be well optimised for conversions.
There are numerous other factors that contribute to whether a viewer will become a customer. These factors include everything from the design and functionality of your website, through to the quality of your content. Plus, things like mobile optimisation and ease of use all affect the overall user experience (UX).
Focusing on all of these factors will give you a better chance of increasing your conversion rate.
So, how important is your page speed?
It is a huge deciding factor as to whether a website visitor will choose to stick around on your site or not, and it affects your Google Rankings. So, good page speed is definitely something you want your website to have.
Achieving Good Page Speed
Here at Fuel, we make optimising page speed a priority for all our clients - regardless of whether it is a brand new website or a re-platform of an existing website.
We know the load time is one of the first hurdles a web visitor will need to overcome before they can even think about buying from your website. Which is why we always ensure all of our sites are optimised in a way that creates excellent page speed performance.
Remember, that a website is an ever-evolving project. The content will not always remain the same as the day it was created. New products may be added, content too. Plus, images will be changed and updated as and when required.
Adding any additional content to your website or making modifications can impact your page speed over time. Therefore, it is important to keep checking that your load times are optimal after making any edits, or getting your web developer to do this job for you. That way, you can ensure your website will always have an optimal loading time for your visitors.
How is your website looking right now, is it a bit slow and clunky? If that is the case, then it is probably time for some modifications.
Check your Google PageSpeed Insights here.
Get in touch with the team here at Fuel, and we can make an assessment on your current website to see how it is performing and what improvements could be made, and even tell you about some of the latest web technologies we are using that could help you Fuel your business online...
