Before dealing with the effects of page load time on conversion rates, we need to have an idea of what these terms mean.

Page load time: as per Google, this is the average amount of time it takes for a page to load, from initiating a page view to load completion in the browser.

Conversion rates: the ratio of complete transactions to the total number of website visitors.

Why are these conversion rates important? It is these conversion rates that actually determine the sales revenue you receive from your website. They have a profound effect on marketing as well.

What do the conversion rates depend on? A visitor to your website is likely to convert only once they have an optimal site experience. To provide this, your website needs to take their patience into consideration. Every website visitor today expects a website to load in the blink of an eye. The concept of having to wait just doesn’t exist anymore. Faster a page loads, the happier and more satisfied the user will be.

The average load time of a page depends on the network latency, server latency and browser load time.

Effects of page load time on conversion rates

Studies show that if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, there is a chance that over 50% of users will leave the website before interacting with it. Another statistic shows that 79% of customers who are not satisfied with a website are less likely to visit that site again. Also, 64% of mobile users expect their page to load in less than 4 seconds and 47% of users expect it to load in at least 2 seconds.

1 second delay in page loading can reduce page views by 11% and conversions by 7%. It would be easier to understand and believe this by looking at some real-life examples.

Amazon, the master of e-commerce, claims that a delay of 1 second in load time can cause them to lose $1.6 billion in a year.

According to Bing, a delay of 2 seconds can cause them to lose 4.3% in revenue per visitor, 3.7% reduction in clicks, and 1.8% reduction in queries.

Firefox quoted that a reduction in page load time by 2.2 seconds can increase the number of downloads by 15.4%.

Next, we have got to think of the steps to reduce this page load time because conversion rates are really important.

Steps to reduce page load time

1. Use GZIP compression for your site, reducing the file size without compromising image and video quality.
2. Try developing the CSS and JavaScript code as external files instead of embedding them within the HTML files and cluttering it.
3. Use optimized images on your pages. This can be done by saving the image under the ‘Save for Web’ option.
4. It is better not to resize your images using HTML because it does not help reduce load time.

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