Latency -- the silent killer of conversions
There are a number of things that have an effect on user behavior, and just as many things, if not more, that can affect your conversion rates. And even though we all do our best to minimize the effects of them on our bottom line, there is one such factor that has a bearing on them both that we tend to forget all about — Latency.
Latency is the time taken from the moment a request is triggered to the response received. And while the ideal duration should be as close to zero, that is rarely ever the case. In fact, in many instances, it can go beyond milliseconds and right into seconds altogether!
According to this report, a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt your conversion rates by 7%, and a two-second delay in webpage load time increases the bounce rates by 103%!
That’s not a lot of time and it’s even less if you put into considerations all the elements that make up a webpage. To make matters worse, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
That’s really not giving you a lot of time, now, is it?
Each bounced visitor is a potential conversion lost. And latency is playing a vital role in the inflated bounce rates.
WHY IS YOUR WEBSITE SLOW?
A lot goes into building and delivering a perfect website. But all those factors will fail to deliver results if the website load time is too slow.
Source
- Server response and location
A good web hosting is key to a smooth-running website. When your browser sends a request to load a website, that request is received by the server which is then responsible for sending all the data to the browser for rendering. If the server hosting your website is slow or lagging, it would only add to load time.
Also playing a role in the speed of your website is the location of your server.
Data is transmitted through cables and satellites. Hence, the farther the server is from the user, the longer it will take for it to render the website onto the browser.
- Traffic
No, not the traffic we encounter on the streets, we’re talking about the user traffic your servers experience.
No matter how fast and competent your server is, it has finite resources.
And these resources are distributed accordingly amongst the requests made from the various browsers, which means that the website loading time at the users’ ends would take a hit.
- Images
No one is arguing over the importance of images on your website, they are critical!
And even though images have a large set of advantages attributed to them, the weight they carry is a handicap.
Images slow down your website.
Large image files consume considerable bandwidth and take longer to load, and hence, become a pertinent factor in your website’s latency.
- Code
Just like images, the code on your website also contributes to the latency. The CSS. JavaScript, and other third party libraries used on your website are also assets that carry weight and might be blocking the rendering of the webpage in the browser.
Source
Just as the weight carried by the frontend is a factor, the size and density of the backend is also a vital component affecting the website load time.
- Status Code 3**
Unnecessary redirects just add to the latency of your website.
If you visit a webpage, and if a redirect has been applied to that URL, it will take an extra round trip to get the content from the server.
Multiple 301 adds to further delays.
HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR SLOW WEBSITE?