If you’re new to building a website (and an online business), you may not think about things like image compression, search engine optimization (SEO), and bounce rate. In fact, you might not even know what these terms mean.
But you should.
All of these things are affected by how fast your website loads for people. And while taking a few seconds to load might not seem like a big deal to you, the truth is, 40% of people will abandon a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load – regardless of what you have to offer.
If you’re still not convinced that site speed matters, keep reading. We’re here to explain those terms you don’t know (mentioned above) and show you why site speed matters.
Image Compression
Nearly two-thirds of your website is likely made up of images, which is great because people are visual by nature. But if your images are too large and require too many resources to load every time someone lands on your site, your pages are going to take forever to load.
Because of this, it’s your job as a website owner to optimize your images so they load blazing fast for site visitors.
Here’s how:
Crop away excess parts of all images
Reduce the pixels to at least 2000px x 2000px (or less)
Compress your image files using a free online tool like TinyPNG
The smaller your image files are, the faster they’re going to load for users.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a complex concept. That said, if you’re a beginner all you need to know is that the faster your website loads for site visitors, the better your site will rank in Google search results. Professional services like Adbuz have regular audits of their client’s websites or web pages for speed checks.
Google emphasizes the user experience when deciding which search results to put on the coveted first page. And if your site is taking too long to load, Google will flag your site as providing people a poor user experience and rank you further down the list. This means less people will see your site and click on it.
One of the best ways to prevent this is to use a website builder such as the one GoDaddy provides beginner site owners. As seen in this GoDaddy website builder review, one of the biggest appeals the GoDaddy website builder has is fast speeds right out of the box (among other things). This gives you a head start and will help you rank higher.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the rate in which people land on one page of your site and leave before clicking on any other webpage on your site.
This is important because the more people that leave your site upon arrival, the worse your SEO, conversion rate, and sales are going to be. After all, you can’t be a successful website owner if no one stays on your website long enough to take action.
There’s a lot to know when it comes to being a new website owner. And while it’s not expected you learn everything right away, one thing is true: website speed will always matter.
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