How to Increase Your Page Speed for Small Business

Maybe you followed our local search advice, or perhaps you concluded yourself. One thing’s for sure you’re making the mobile web a better place for users. You’ve got to increase your page speed. Yes, we realize making your site mobile-friendly was a considerable effort. We can understand your thinking: “My mobile-optimized site already puts me ahead of my competition. Why do I need to do anything more?”

To fully understand why there are two things we need to answer:

  • How page speed factors into higher conversions
  • Why page speed matters for local search

We’ll explain both of these to offer your small business your customers won’t resist.

Trust us when we say you will want the SEO services we’re talking about.

Page speed can influence your conversion rate. High page speed = more conversions.

Page Speed is the Key to Higher Conversions

Why does page speed matter so much?

Faster websites = more revenue. It’s as simple as that. It’s not that simple. (Then again, nothing in SEO is.) This is why it’s worth knowing why page speed offers such a massive advantage to a small business like yours.

Here’s how your customers typically find your business online: When someone uses a search engine like Google, they often look for an answer to a specific question. If your business’s website can provide that answer, it will appear in their search results. Your future customers will click on your site, expecting to find the answer to their questions. What do you suppose will happen if your site takes too long to load? Do you think your customers will wait patiently for your website to load? No, they won’t. They will leave.

You could have the best deals in the world. You could have the fastest shipping and the friendliest customer service. But those will mean nothing if your potential customers don’t stick around to see them because the thing that will scare mobile users off more than anything else is page speed. Not lousy Yelp reviews, not an ugly interface. (Although those aren’t great to have either.)

This is how bad it is:

  • 40% of all users will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Kissmetrics)
  • 40% of users will go to a competitor after a bad mobile experience (Google’s Mobile Playbook)

So not only will users leave your site, but they’ll go to your competitor’s sites. If you don’t optimize your mobile website’s speed, you are giving your customers to your competition. Even loyal customers who have bought from you time and again—it’s only a matter of time before they look for a website that can offer them your service faster.

The fix for this is easy: Increase your page speed.

Websites that load faster retain their users better. And the longer those users stay, the more likely they will purchase. But increasing page speed goes beyond just keeping customers. Faster page load speed can have other beneficial effects:

  • Reduce bounce rate
  • Generate more leads
  • Increase PageRank score
  • Get Google to index more pages

So you see, users are only one side of the coin regarding page speed. Google also wants websites to be as fast as possible. It’s all part of their current focus on giving users unique mobile experiences. (And in case you were wondering, “amazing” means “fast,” at least in part). Faster page speed makes your site easier to use. And when your website is easy to use, you and your customers benefit from it.

Why Page Speed Matters for Local Search

Why does local search matter so much to your small business? Quite a lot. Google has been making a big push to accommodate people who use the search engine to find nearby businesses. They want to ensure people find what they’re looking for immediately. Page speed helps with this. Say your small business thrives off the patronage of your local population. You might think you don’t need to focus on page speed. After all, people who find your website are already in the area. You’re bound to attract them just by proximity.

Hate to break it to you, but that’s bad business sense. Why leave something to chance when you can take action statistically proven by Google to retain customers, boost your Google visibility, and get you more revenue? Because that’s what you can get when you increase your page speed. With a fast mobile page, users who find your business online—by “chance” or not—will find what they’re looking before. And when their search query is met with a fast, responsive website, they’ll be more likely to stick around. And that’s when you make a sale.

Need more convincing? Google unveiled three local ranking factors last year that are critical to having a thriving local site.

  • Relevance—how well your business matches up to the user’s search
  • Distance—how close you are to the local user
  • Prominence—how well-known your business is

These factors can put your local business site on the first page of Google. We’ve written a blog that can show you how to take better advantage of them.

Page speed is a critical part of your mobile marketing effort to ensure visitors stay on your page.

How to Increase Your Page Speed for Your Mobile Site

Now you know how crucial it is to increase your mobile page speed. But how do you do it? Here are a few steps and strategies you can use for page speed success:

Get your site on a CDN. That’s a “Content Delivery Network.” The basic idea behind CDNs is that they help your site content get to users more quickly, depending on their location. For example, say someone searches for your business, which is located in downtown Los Angeles. But your site is hosted on a Tampa Bay, FL server. Your website will load more slowly for users than a competitor’s locally stored website. A CDN ensures your site will load quickly, no matter where users search.

Improve your site with HTTP/2. HTTP/2 is becoming the new standard thanks to more efficient compression, prioritization, and data loading. With the old HTTP, your site content had to wait in line before loading, which could look sluggish and incomplete on the user’s end. HTTP/2 loads everything at once. That’s crucial when you consider the short amount of patience people have when using a mobile.

Offer a different experience for mobile than your desktop site. When you think of mobile sites, do you picture your regular website, only smaller? If so, you could be shooting your business in its proverbial foot. Many mobile sites are only scaled-down versions of the desktop versions, which we’ve already said can look janky. But you can do one better by designing your mobile site to cater to the needs and demands of mobile users.

Users act differently on mobile than they do on the desktop. They don’t want to be bogged down by images, ads, and unnecessary code. Mobile sites must be fast, or it’s off to the next one they go. So ensure your mobile site isn’t plagued by scroll bars or other hangers-on from your desktop site.

The Bottom Line

Giving users a unique, fast, amazing mobile experience should be a top priority when they visit your website. Of course, improving your ROI and getting people to buy stuff is important too. But you can’t afford to ignore the importance of mobile any longer. Only by implementing these page speed suggestions can you compete with—and crush—your competition.

Not sure what to make of our mobile page speed suggestions? We’d love to explain them in more detail. Just call us, and we can review what you need for small business success to reach the mobile market.

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