Why you should care about Web Performance

If you find yourself caring about values like Bounce rate, Revenue, Time on site, page views, user satisfaction, online business success, you should care about web performance! Web Performance is not only a topic for nerds.

• Web Performance is about your business
• Web Performance is about the user experience
• Web Performance is about Accessibility
• Web Performance is about Sustainability

The performance of your site has a significant impact on your whole company. It starts at the perception the user has from your company, over page views and conversions up to user experience and customer satisfaction.

Why Performance matters

1. Google Ranking
2. Brand Perception
3. Conversion Rate
4. Page Views and Bounce Rate
5. Customer Satisfaction and Retention
6. Web Performance and Accessibility
7. Web Performance and Sustainability

Google Ranking

Google is obsessed with speed and fast sites. Because site speed is a crucial indicator for good user experience, the site speed is a factor for search rankings. Google announced that site speed soon is a search signal for page experience!

Brand Perception

“The first impression matters”! We often say this when we meet new people. Maybe you don’t like the smell or the laugh of someone while you’re meeting for the first time. We perceive all of this unconsciously, but it influences how much we like or dislike someone. This process only takes milliseconds!

If your website is slow, people dislike it. But not only your website. The frustrating experience has an impact on your whole company. Your company feels broken for the user!

a high performing site can be a ticket to online success

Conversion Rate

You might already consider the conversion rate as an essential business metric of your online business if you have an online shop, for example.

AliExpress reduced load time by 36% and saw a 10.5% increase in orders and a 27% increase in conversion for new customers. (wpostats.com)

But even if you try to sell workshops, your knowledge or want the user to engage to more social volunteering, you can use the conversion rate of your goals to measure if you have success.

AutoAnything reduced page load time by 50% and saw an 12-13% increase in sales. (wpostats.com)

Improving your page speed is one of the most significant ways of increasing your conversion rate.

Removing one client-side redirect from Google’s DoubleClick resulted in a 12% improvement in click-through rate. (wpostats.com)

These are only some examples. You can create your own by start improving your web sites performance.

Page Views and Bounce Rate

These metrics might also be familiar to you. A high number of page views and a low bounce rate are suitable for any business. If your users like your page, the content as the speed they stay longer and view more pages.

Google did some experiments where they slow downed their search about 500ms and ended up with a 25% decrease in their searches.

Customer Satisfaction and Retention

If your users like what they get on your site they come back! If they don’t like it, you probably lose them forever.
Making a new user, a returning user is not easy. Poor web performance can ruin all your work to keep the new user on your site.

Web Performance and Accessibility

The sum of transfer size kilobytes of all resources requested by a page is still increasing. And as mobile users are a growing group of site visitors, we as developers and companies with websites have to keep in mind that the network connection varies depending on our location.

Web Performance and Sustainability

Often websites ship a ton of code. Not only JavaScript files but also CSS, images, tracking pixels, analytics and much more. In combination, the user’s browser has to process megabytes. This process takes time, but it also costs CPU and memory, especially on a mobile device.

All these operations need energy; Much energy. The internet is an underrated climate sinner. Therefore a fast website is more sustainable; it produces less CO2 and helps our planet to be cleaner.

Conclusion

In this post, I tried to outline why performance matters and why you should care about Web Performance independent of your business.

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Cheers Marc