Most of us consider webpage loading speeds to be a technical matter rather than a marketing concern, and believe that loading speeds will not affect sale volume. But is there really no relation between the two?
Research Results
The IT company Yottaa has published their research findings about webpage loading speeds. Here are their brief conclusions.
- When the website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors abandon browsing, and 80% of visitors decide not to come back.
- On mobile websites 74% of visitors abandon browsing if it takes more than 7 seconds to load.
- With every additional second added to loading time, you will lose 11% of page views, 16% of user satisfaction (I do not know how this is measured), and 7% of conversion rate.
Speeding Up
Unfortunately, improving performance is quite a complicated task for non-technical persons. In that case, Google's free PageSpeed 
analytics service is a good place to start. Even simpler, just removing useless content improves loading speeds quite a lot. Previously, I only recommended fast-loading webpages based on emotion. Now, there is research evidence: if you improve your website's performance, you will sell more.
© October, 2014