A slow WordPress site speed will prove detrimental to your business. It would only frustrate visitors and ensure that they never visit again which would lead to lost visitors and conversions. The fact is that website speed is a ranking factor that you cannot overlook. Besides, its importance is growing every year. If you have a WordPress site and want to know about the importance of improving its speed, you have come to the right place. This post takes a close look at some of the top reasons why you need to improve WordPress site speed. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started.
1. Integral to User Experience
One of the main reasons why you must improve your WordPress site speed is because it is integral to user experience. If your website does not load fast, it affects the user experience the most. No matter how amazing your website might look, nobody wants to visit a website that is slow and takes a long time to load. Instead, they would simply abandon your site and find an alternative.
Google Core Web Vitals will help you enhance the user experience. It focuses on improving speed to deliver the best performance. Since a fast WordPress website will provide improved satisfaction, you cannot overlook its importance. Moreover, speed also improves overall functionality.
2. Improved Search Engine Ranking
Another reason why you must improve your WordPress site speed is that it will help improve the search engine ranking. Mobile-friendliness and speed are important to Google as they influence the overall experience of visitors. As the performance of your website depends on its speed, you must ensure that you get it right. Otherwise, it will affect the page experience metric which will take a hit on your ranking.
Moreover, if your website is slow and takes a long time to open, it would increase the bounce rate which determines the number of users that come and leave your website without performing any action. To reduce your bounce rate, you must improve website speed. A low bounce rate will help improve your search engine ranking. Hence, you must work on website speed. Besides, it is important to keep in mind that a fast website would rank much higher on Google search queries which makes it easier for your target audience to find your webpages. If you compromise on the speed, your search engine ranking will take a hit.
3. Increased Website Conversions
Getting customers to visit your website will allow you to achieve the first milestone. The next step would be to get customers to take the desired action. This is where conversion comes into place. It refers to when customers take an action such as clicking on an ad, filling the subscription form, making a purchase, and the like. Customers prefer visiting websites that have a short load time. Furthermore, you can expect an increase in conversions if the website loads quickly.
On the other hand, if your website loads take a long time to load, you would end up losing sales. When buyers are shopping online, speed plays a huge role in influencing their final decision to make a purchase or not from a website. Online shoppers will be discouraged to buy something from a slow website even if they find the right products on that website. By investing in WordPress site speed, you can expect to take your website conversions to the next level. Besides, customers get irritated when using a slow loading site.
4. Ensures Customer Retention
If there is one thing that you need to consider when considering whether to improve WordPress website speed or not, it is the fact that speed affects customer retention. If you have a slow website, you will struggle to retain customers who would simply opt for an alternative.
Since businesses already spend considerable resources trying to figure out how they can retain customers, it is best that they start by improving their WordPress site speed. You can rest assured that will provide a greater return on investment than any other decision. Besides, it is justified because it will provide returning customers and ensure recurring revenue. Even if your site is slower than a competitor’s by a few seconds, people would flock to their website. Regardless of how great your product or service might be, you would be unable to retain customers if your website is slow. With competition at an all-time high, you must focus on speed if you want to stay in business.
5. Increased Traffic
When you improve your WordPress site speed, it will decrease the bounce rate which would help generate more traffic. It is another reason for having a fast website. You can count on it to attract more traffic. By delivering an enhanced user experience, people would be more likely to revisit your site and spend more time on it. This would also lead to an increase in the conversion rate.
Moreover, faster websites tend to get more social shares as they provide an improved user experience which results in an increase in organic traffic. You can use Google Analytics to monitor the behavior of website visitors and optimize it for speed. The less time it takes for your website to load the more traffic you can expect to generate and vice-versa. Therefore, you must find ways to improve WordPress website speed. Otherwise, your website will fail to generate enough traffic.
6. Better Usability
A notable benefit of improving WordPress site speed is that it ensures better usability. Online businesses will find optimizing their site for speed to be one of the best decisions. By improving speed for mobile users, one can expect to increase mobile traffic considerably. As over half of the internet users rely on a mobile device, it is important that you improve speed. Besides, the number is only expected to increase every year which means that you must focus on increasing the speed of your WordPress site. The reason why the number of mobile users is increasing each year is that mobile networks are becoming faster and so are mobile devices.
People today rely on mobile devices for carrying out mundane tasks like searching, viewing, reading, and buying. But, speed is necessary to serve mobile traffic. As mobile networks are still inconsistent and can be rather slow in most parts of the world, they would affect the performance of the site.
According to Google, a webpage should load within 5 seconds on 3G and take less time on 4G. You can use Google’s Speed Score Card tool to test the performance of your mobile website. It enables you to run tests on different mobile networks like 3G and 4G. Not only does the tool tell you the speed rating of your website, but it also suggests some of the best ways through which you can fix those issues to improve website speed. When you speed up the website for smartphones, you get to boost conversions. Besides, mobile phones are the future. Hence, you must ensure that your site is fast enough for them.
7. Scalability
An important reason why you must improve your WordPress site speed is that a slow site eats up server resources. It causes the server to bloat which would mean that your site would be unable to serve actual customers.
As for a fast website, it would load quickly and allow users to navigate seamlessly and make a purchase without any hassle. Besides, you would be able to serve more customers. It is also important to mention here that a fast website would be energy-efficient as it would consume less computational power in comparison to a website that is slow.
8. Boost Credibility
Lastly, improving your WordPress site speed will boost credibility. People tend to judge a business by the amount of time the business website takes to load. Most customers today focus on the performance of a website to evaluate whether to make a purchase or not. They also base their perception of the business based on the performance of the website. Therefore, you must improve WordPress site speed to show your seriousness to customers. If you have a slow-loading website, it would only highlight a non-serious attitude and a lack of focus. By dedicating your resources towards boosting your website speed, you can expect to improve credibility.
Takeaway
After you have finished reading the post, you will know why you need to improve your WordPress site speed. Enhance the speed of your website to make it stand out. It will allow you to make the most of your website. If you do not maintain and monitor your WordPress site, you would not know what issues it might be facing which would lead to you ignoring them. Thus, your website would be unable to perform and result in you losing potential customers. Learn more about how to improve your WordPress site speed to ensure that you know what steps you can take to bring about a change. Otherwise, your business would fail to compete.
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