Digital marketers often think of page speed as something that is only associated with basic Search Engine Optimization. This is a mistake. Page speed impacts all your marketing channels; it contributes to your audience experience and can positively affect customer engagement. Think about the last time you tapped or clicked on a link in an email, waited as the page slowly loaded, only to exit out of the tab. Because you did not wait for the page to download, that organization did not generate a lead, lost a conversion, or their bounce rate increased. If the page downloaded faster and you landed on the page, you would have been more likely to have filled out the form, bought those new running shoes, or read the post.
Websites are the final destination for most digital marketing channels. With consumers increasingly relying on mobile devices to connect to the digital world, page speed plays a more significant role. Mobile users expect pages to download within 2 to 3 seconds. As a marketer, you need to get users to your product or content, whether clicks came from a targeted email, a search ad, or an organic listing. That’s because users expect landing pages to load in less than 3 seconds. That’s partly why Google’s benchmark for a fast page is 3 seconds.
Landing pages with slow page speeds will negatively impact your customer engagement. Half of all users going to a landing page with slow page speed will abandon their visits, resulting in missed opportunities. Users that have a poor experience are also less likely to engage with your future marketing efforts, making for a steeper hill to climb to reach KPI’s and revenue goals.
Optimizing your website page speed is an ongoing effort, requiring some actions to take time to complete. However, you can start seeing better results even with small incremental changes. Studies have shown that reducing a page’s load time by milliseconds will improve user engagement. E-commerce sites benefit by increases in average order value and conversions. Content websites see users stay on the page longer, watch a video, or view infographics. If small changes can be beneficial, think about how a site that goes from 7 seconds to 3 seconds can affect your metrics.
At Lever Interactive, page speed matters not only for search engine optimization but also for search engine marketing. Google ads have a component at a campaign level that rates the quality of the landing page. One factor that the Google Ads algorithm considers is page speed. Our SEO team works in tandem with our SEM experts to provide recommendations to clients on improving the speed of their landing pages. A client of Lever Interactive saw a year over year improvement in page quality score for non-branded campaigns resulting in -17% for cost per click and -31% in cost per acquisition. The conversion rate on the landing pages with faster page speeds increased 20%. The changes not only helped the client increase their conversion, but also saved them money when it came to the cost to run the ads.
If you are looking to improve your customer engagement, connect with us. Lever Interactive can analyze your site and provide suggestions to reduce page load times, improving engagement across channels.
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