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In a customer’s subconscious, they have a specific length of time they allow themselves to spend on a website. If you have a slow website, and the customer cannot check out within that specific length of time they have allotted in their mind, that is where you’ll see a lot of unexplained abandonment. If the website is slow, it is more likely to be a frustrating experience for the user.
For example, when we worked on GSF car parts, customers were originally on the site for six minutes. After making the website twice as fast, customers still spent six minutes on the site, but they purchased much more during that time because they could get more done in that amount of time. The average order value and conversion both went up.
WHEN TO TEST WEBSITE SPEED AND CAPACITY Some websites do 80% of their sales during two months of the year. If that describes your business, then testing your website speed in August will likely produce brilliant numbers, but if it’s not a peak moment, this test won’t tell you how your site will do in the run-up to Christmas or on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
The secret is to measure the load from the previous year, if available, and estimate what you think you’ll need this year. Then always have a margin of safety. If you think you’re going to have X number of visitors per minute, then you want to have 50% or more capacity available
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for them. When calculating what you’ll need, also consider your marketing campaigns. Maybe your email campaign is going out with on-sale items at an already peak time. This additional traffic could bring the site to a halt. You need to be sure you have ample resources so your users can get more done in the amount of time they allow themselves to spend on the site.
Website speed and capacity is one of the most important KPIs. It affects every other part of your website, as well as the conversion rate. At smartebusiness, we’ve found many ways to increase the speed and capacity of a site, from varnish caching, optimising the server and using clean code.
RECAP: WEBSITE SPEED AND CAPACITY Customers spend an average of six minutes on your website. If your site is running slow, they’ll achieve a lot less in that amount of time than if it is running at a high speed. The faster your website speed, the higher your average order value and conversion rate will be.
KPI: WEBSITE SPEED AND CAPACITY Put it to use:
• Slow page load can cause Google penalties that affect your page ranking.
• Measure your web speed often. This will help increase conversion rates.
• Google Analytics can help you measure your website speed, as well as other sites like
www.webpagetest.org.
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• Your site should measure under four seconds.
• Increasing speed and capacity involves using clean code, varnish caching and optimising the server.
Answer the following questions:
• Have you experienced slow page load recently or seen a lot of browser abandonment from visitors?
• What is your current website speed? Use the information in this chapter to check the speed via
webpagetest.org and Google Analytics.
• What are three things that could be causing the reduction in website speed? How can you fix them?
• Are there certain times of the year when you need more website capacity (e.g. Black Friday, Christmas)?
• How do you plan on making sure your website is ready for visitors during this peak time?
HOW TO RAISE THIS KPI— WEBSITE SPEED AND CAPACITY But what can you do about your site’s capabilities?
MOBILE SPEED
• Do the mobile speed test here
https://search.google. com/test/mobile- friendly Check for images that don’t load quickly; how does Google rate you?
• Loading testing—ask your host to do some load testing on mobile above what you think you will need for your busiest period. When does the site
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