Website load speed affects efficiency

There are few general criteria of quality for any website. They include (without methods of traffic attraction which can be separated to another group of qualities) the following parameters.

• Ability to handle load. Website can serve 1 page view a second very well, but at the same time it may not be able to take more than 3 online visitors. Here you must know the following fact – even if developers tell you about 10k visitors a day, such a website can generate no more than 30-50k page views. This indicates that page generation time is about 1+ second. Under these conditions the website can’t be treated as an efficient online marketing tool.
• Standard compliance. Standard solutions are easy to develop and support. Standard code has more compliance with current (and future) browser versions. Also standard compliance tells about high developer culture, thus standard website is more qualitative than not standard-compliant in the most of cases.
• Usability. Your visitors don’t stand to use tricky, scaring, or just not enough clear website. You can perform a simple usability test among your colleagues or friends — just ask them to use website to solve any ordinary task (find information, send a request) and trace their actions. You should also focus on probationer’s feelings during task completion — this will help you to understand your target audience better.
• Business goals compliance. Website can be fast, qualitative, and usable, but it may not solve the main business goals of its owner. For example there can be no contacts on the elite estate website. Or there can be no (or somehow hidden) “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” buttons in online store. Business goals compliance is one of the main attributes of a qualitative website.

Website load speed as a quality criterion

Fast websites seem to be more qualitative and more pretty (this has been confirmed by several researches). Users like fast websites and find them more reliable. This is especially important for online stores – here users can expand their senses from website speed to the other company services (such as delivery). Both Google and Microsoft confirmed that increased delay in website load lead to drop n website conversion rate.

What are the real numbers? WEBO Software has great experience in implementation website acceleration and can share the following data.

• 100% website speed increase leads to 5% sales growth,
• 200% — 10% growth,
• 300% — 12% growth.

Also there are many other positive effects, such as page view rate rise or server side expenses drop.