Trim the Fat - Improve Page Load Times

This week I installed Google Analytics to my blog. A week later I was eager to get back to my blog and see all of the metrics – or the lack thereof. Unfortunately, I had not properly marketed my blog to gain any substantial site traffic. Over the past week since Google Analytics has been installed on my blog, I have had one visitor. Here is what I know about my visitor:

• They visited my blog on Saturday, November 24 
• They are from Jaipur, India 
• They are using Google Chrome as their Internet browser on Windows operating system 
• They arrived on my blog from a Google organic search 

While my lack of metrics left me with little to discuss this week, I took some time looking at all of the metrics available that I had previously overlooked when using Google Analytics for my companies website because I had become enamored with all of the “sexy metrics” that were standing out like page views, traffic sources, etc. The metric that stood out to me was the page load time. What does this mean? Was my page quick to load, or slow? How could this affect my user’s experience on my blog.

First, average page load time refers to how long your site and its content takes to load for a visitor. Load time can affect your bounce rate and page abandonment, as users may become impatient and frustrated the longer they have to wait. According to KISSMetrics, “a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in converstions” (Work, n.d.) How does that contribute to your bottom line? For an e-commerce site that brings in $100,000 each day, a one second page delay could equate to $2.5 million in lost sales annually (Work, n.d.). “79% of web shoppers who have trouble with web site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again and around 44% of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online” (Jacob, n.d.). This can have extremely damaging affects on your business’s reputation and sales.

Users expectations vary depending on whether they are using a desktop computer or a mobile device. Visitors are used to longer wait times on their mobile device, which is often dependent on cell service. 47% of users expect a web page to load within 2 seconds or less, which reflects poorly for my page 6.67 average load time. “40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load” (Work, n.d.). My lone visitor spent 0:00 time on my blog, after waiting for the page to load and immediately left.

KISSMetrics made some recommendations for “trimming the fat” and improving site load time including;

• Use GZip compression to reduce file size of images, video, and other content by up to 70% 
• Optimize images for the web so they load faster. Don’t just rely on HTML to resize the images, do this in Photoshop or another photo editor to save space on your server 
• Investigate plugins to use cache so your website isn’t forced to dynamically load with every page visit 
• Consider a Content Delivery Network for busy sites. A Content Delivery Network hosts pages on servers that are geographical nearby to your visitors 

First impressions are important, especially online. If a users first experience with a website is slow to load they will immediately have a bad impression of the website and the business before evening viewing the site.

Jacob, S. (n.d.). Speed Is A Killer - Why Decreasing Page Load Time Can Drastically Increase Conversions. The @KISSmetrics Marketing Blog. Retrieved November 26, 2012, from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/speed-is-a-killer/

Work, S. (n.d.). How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line. (n.d.). The @KISSmetrics Marketing Blog. Retrieved November 26, 2012, from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/