“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”
― Mario Andretti, Professional Race Car Driver
Indianapolis, IN – For many of us, the front door to our business is our website. The web plays an incredibly crucial role in how we do business, and how users actually arrive at your front door can greatly enhance whether or not your message is being delivered. Creating mobile-friendly websites that load quickly is key to creating a good user experience.
According to a study from KISSmetrics, even shaving off 1 second of a page’s load time can dramatically increase whether or not the user won’t abandon the connection. If you put that into perspective, for an e-commerce site making $100,000 per day, that delay could cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.
We just aren’t patient people anymore. We expect things to be optimized for our specific device and we don’t want to wait. Google is further pushing this trend by altering their algorithms to reward quick page speed sites as well as factor in if they are mobile responsive. Google launched this “Mobile-friendly Test” tool to quickly see the mobile responsiveness of your site, or any site.
“A 1 second delay in page response can
result in a 7% reduction in conversion.”
—KISSmetrics
How Long Are Users Willing To Wait?
The chart below shows how long users are willing to wait for a website before they abandon their efforts. While a surprising number would wait 20+ seconds (an eternity in this digital age), some would start moving on after just 1 second of wait time.
Healthcare professionals are busy people and the world of medicine isn’t shrinking. In fact, medical information is projected to double every 73 days by the year 2020. Much of the information that doctors are researching come directly from branded websites, and just recently, most of that research is being delivered through a mobile device.
Deliver Content Quicker
We can make adjustments to our web based systems by focusing on a few key elements that can greatly enhance the speed. Google PageSpeed scores rely on a number of factors, but some quick fixes include:
- Image and files sizes – Make sure all of your images are optimized for the specific device as well as compressed to ensure quick load times. Images are worth a 1000 words but they also account for the most 1’s and 0’s.
- UI Metrics – Consider fonts and button sizing when designing your site. These critical choices can make the difference between “So Slow” to “Here We Go.”
- Compressed CSS and JS – Once a website is launched, it’s always good practice to compress the CSS and JS files to their max in order to streamline the browser performance. Many sites start with a template, leaving behind thousands of lines of unused code. Here is a great tool to get you started.
- Content Design – By delivering content in quicker bits of information, users can browse for relevant information faster, creating a better overall user experience and less uneccessary page requests.
“America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.”
—Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell), Talladega Nights
