Whether you just launched a new website or you’ve managed one for years, you may wonder if it’s really necessary to monitor web performance.
There are many proven ways to drive more traffic to your site. But if users arrive at your site and it takes too long to load, they’re not going to stick around.
To stay competitive in today’s online market, your website needs to be fast and flawless. If you want the proof, here are five compelling statistics about website performance.
5 Reasons to Monitor Web Performance
Fact #1: 40% of users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.
It was shocking enough when researchers announced that the average person now has a shorter attention span than a goldfish.
But when it comes to online browsing, the statistics are even worse. If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, you’re going to lose two in five visitors before they even see your homepage.
Fact #2: If Google increased its page load time by 0.5 seconds, they’d get 25% fewer searches.
Half a second may not seem like a big deal. But in the world of load speed, it might as well be 100 years.
Google processes an astounding 3.5 billion searches every day. If their search engine slowed down by even half a second, they would lose around 875 million searches every day.
Do you think they have a good reason to monitor web performance?
Fact #3: If Amazon increased its page load time by 0.1 seconds, they’d lose 1% of their sales.
One percent sounds like a very small amount. But let’s not forget this is Amazon we’re talking about.
As the undisputed king of online commerce, Amazon sells millions of items every day. During its 2016 Prime Day event, Amazon sold a mind-boggling 636 items per second. At these numbers, even a 1% drop would result in millions of dollars of loss.
Granted, your company probably isn’t trying to compete with Amazon. (Don’t worry, none of us can). Still, these statistics offer compelling reasons to analyze your own website performance.
Fact #4: Google recommends improving load time when a website is slower than 95% of others.
There are currently 1.2 billion live websites around the world. And that number is climbing by the second.
If your website isn’t faster than 1.14 billion of them, then it isn’t fast enough. To remain competitive in Google rankings, it’s vital to monitor web performance.
Fact #5: A 2-second delay during a sales transaction results in abandonment rates of up to 87%.
Do you have an online marketplace on your website? If you do, here are some shocking statistics to take note of:
- Shoppers abandon 70% of online shopping carts before purchase.
- 51% of shoppers in the US list site slowness as the main reason to abandon a purchase.
- If you improve your page load time by two seconds, you can more than double your average conversion rate.
Final Thoughts
The numbers speak for themselves. If you want to remain competitive online, monitoring your website’s performance isn’t optional. It’s necessary.
What’s the easiest way to monitor web performance? We invite you to learn more about Optimum System Online and the many valuable services we offer.
