We touched on some quick tips for accelerating Ecommerce Website performance in a previous blog post, but we still receive a lot of questions about how a faster website load time directly BENEFITS an organization. If you have struggled with that question in the past, you are in the right place.
In addressing this issue, it’s important to return to the three basic business initiatives… increase profit/revenue, reduce cost, and provide better service. The beautiful thing about website load time is that it can actually benefit all three. Many people do not understand just what benefits improved online performance can render. The first huge benefit of a faster Website/application is:
Increase Revenue through the following…
1) Marketing Effectiveness Increases
As a rule, consumers today have very short attention spans. They expect websites to respond in the blink of an eye, and are often drawn to the more interactive aspects of the websites that they visit. Whereas online marketing in days past relied on invasive pop-ups and other ads, contemporary marketing depends on a constant interaction between the company and the end user. When this connection is reliable and fast, users feel as though they are in control of their experience, and this reflects well on brand image.
“Companies need to create dynamic, relevant web content” -Gartner
Once the performance is a given, businesses can be free to load their marketing materials with all of the rich and interactive applications that drive in the maximum amount of leads possible. Website performance absolutely impacts marketing effectiveness.
2) Gain Higher Search Rankings
This has been a hotly discussed item this year. This spring, Google took the step of factoring Website speed into their algorithm. This in itself should make us pay close attention to our site load times. Even industry leaders must now place a priority on their content delivery in order to remain where they want to be… at the top of search results.
Many businesses have huge budgets for SEO, and those will now have to include reliable and effective content delivery. All of the other work could be for naught if the site doesn’t perform.
3) Sales/Conversion Rates Increase
This is where the rubber really meets the road. If your business has a certain percentage of unique visitors converting to buyers, then you are naturally going to want to increase that percentage as well as work to increase the total visitors to the site. There are a number of website statistics that lead us to believe that visitors will stay longer on a site that performs well. Here are a few:
47% of users expect site and page load times to be 2 seconds or less -royal.pingdom.com
10% of visitors leave a site for each extra second of load time -Peer 1 Hosting
Based on these statistics, a page load decrease of a few seconds drastically increases visitor retention, and represents a significant amount of revenue gained. This dollar gain grows exponentially the greater the load time improvement. Here is a quick example using sample numbers:
A Website improves from a 5 second to a 3 second load time.
Average Monthly Revenue $190,000
Average Monthly Visitors 400,000
________________________________
Rev/Visitor $0.48
1 second = 10% visitor increase, so 2 seconds improvement= 20% increase
400,000 x 20% = 80,000 x $o.48 = $38,400!!
That is a very, very impressive monthly revenue gain, especially for such a small organization. Think about the possibilities for your own business, and feel free to plug your numbers into this equation. Users are only getting more and more demanding, so the potential revenue increase derived from performance improvement will only increase.
Check back in with us periodically; we will circle back to the cost reduction and service aspects of a faster Website or application.
Jonathan Hoppe
