Is Site Speed Optimization Worth It?
I figured I would let Google tell you why site speed is important. I mean they are the master of the internet. Here is an article in which Google discusses how performance can affect conversions. “Retaining users is crucial to improving conversions. Slow sites have a negative impact on revenue, and the opposite is also true.” The article goes on to show a few real-world examples of how an increase in performance can play a large role in a companies profitability.
- For Mobify, every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed worked out to a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion, yielding an average annual revenue increase of nearly $380,000. Additionally, a 100ms decrease in checkout page load speed amounted to a 1.55% increase in session-based conversion, which in turn yielded an average annual revenue increase of nearly $530,000.
- DoubleClick found publishers whose sites loaded within five seconds earned up to twice as much ad revenue than sites loading within 19 seconds.
- When AutoAnything reduced page load time by half, they saw a boost of 12-13% in sales.
Google’s Site Speed Impact Calculator
Google has created a site speed impact calculator. The calculator will estimate how much revenue you can expect to gain if you were to speed up your site (see screenshot below).
I ran Nike.com through the impact calculator and simply guessed on their visitors, conversion rate and average order value. As you can see Nike would gain an extra $657,573 if they increased their site speed by 1 second. Run your site through the calculator and see if you are leaving money on the table.
Do Users Really Leave if a Site is Slow?
I know what you are thinking, are people really leaving my site if it loads in 5 seconds vs 3 seconds? The answer is yes! These numbers from thinkwithgoogle.com on the impact of site speed are pretty mind-boggling and prove that faster is definitely better! The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave after viewing only one page.
Don’t Blink! Site Speed Success Stories
Here are just a handful of sites that we have worked on and some of their fantastic results. I apologize but for privacy purposes we are forced to blur out the names of our clients.
Large eCommerce Site
This site is nearly running faster than 94% of the web
The standards many have been using for page load time come from a study conducted by Geoff Kenyon where he compares website speed against the rest of the web:
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if your site loads in 5 seconds, it is faster than approximately 25% of the web
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if your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is faster than approximately 50% of the web
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if your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is faster than approximately 75% of the web
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if your site loads in 0.8 seconds, it is faster than approximately 94% of the web
Education Website
There were a few things missing on this site that would have improved the fully loaded time. Mainly the client wanted to continue using their old hosting which is absolutely fine, however I do believe that our hosting could have done a lot to bring that fully loaded time down some more.
This client also had a very popular page that was being weighed down by YouTube videos. We were able to get this page down from a fully loaded time of 13.6 seconds to 2.2 seconds without removing a single video.
Design Company
Our Site Speed Process
Backup your Site
The first thing we do when optimizing a site is we make sure that we have a proper backup. Site speed optimization can be tricky at times and can cause a site to break. This is why we always create a backup beforehand. You can be assured that protecting your site is our top priority.
Documentation
We then take full page screenshots of your website so that we can compare the site before and after and make sure that nothing looks different or out of place. We also take screenshots of your sites before and after scores from GTmetrix.
Configure Plugins
Next, we upload and configure the best premium site speed plugin on the market. We make tweaks to the plugin according to your site’s needs. After this, we will perform image optimization. We will then take a look at what GTmetrix, Pingdom and Google Page Speed Insights are telling us.
Set Up a CDN
Setting up a CDN is extremely important. Here is Cloudflare explaining what a CDN does, “When someone visits your site the content will be delivered from the closest to your visitor server and this will make your website loads faster than ever in every part of the world! Additionally, Cloudflare protects your website by analyzing which of the traffic you get is legitimate and which is malicious. It will automatically block malicious and unwanted traffic.”
If you are hosting with us Kinsta has a free CDN that we will set up for you. If you are not hosting with us we will likely advise that you allow us to set up a free Cloudflare CDN for your site.
Reassess
We will see what else needs to be optimized. We have been building custom WordPress websites since 2009 so we have all the knowledge that is needed if we need to perform advanced site speed optimization.
Your WordPress Speed Optimization May Include
- Leverage browser caching
- Defer parsing of JavaScript
- Minify Javascript
- Optimize Images
- Serve scaled images
- Minify HTML
- Minify CSS
- Avoid bad requests
- Avoid landing page redirects
- Enable gzip compression
- Enable Keep-Alive
- Inline small CSS
- Inline Small Javascript
- Minimize redirects
- Minimize request size
- Optimize the order of styles and scripts
- Serve resources from a consistent URL
- Specify a cache validator
- Add Expires headers
- Set up a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
- Reduce server response time
- Convert your site to it’s secure, HTTPS version
- Optimize/Upgrade PHP
- Optimize the order of styles and scripts
- Assist you with moving your site to a proper hosting environment (if you are not already hosting with us)
- And MORE!
How Much Does Site Speed Optimization Cost
Here at Steck Insights, we are running a Fall site speed special for $400. I have seen other companies charge anywhere from $1,200 to $12,000 for this service. I hate to sound salesy but we are only running this special through October 31st and then the price will go back to $1,000+. Please reach out to us if you are interested. We would be happy to test your site and give you an honest assessment on if your site speed needs to be optomized
Do You Offer A Guarantee?
Yes, of course we do! If you are not fully satisfied with your results we will issue you a 100% refund. We are happy to make this promise to you because as a team we are willing to do almost anything to make you happy.
