10 Reasons Why A Slow Website is Hurting Your Company

Copyright © 2014 ZeroLag www.ZeroLag.com

10 Reasons WhyA Slow Website is Hurting Your Company

No one likes using a slow web site. BUT WHEN DOES A WEB SITE PERFORMANCE ISSUE GO FROM A MERE INCONVENIENCE WHICH CAN BE TOLERATED, TO A PROBLEM THAT CAN HURT YOUR BUSINESS? ONLY YOU CAN ANSWER THAT QUESTION, BUT BEFORE YOU DECIDE, IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND WHY POOR WEB SITE PERFORMANCE CAN SHOW UP ON YOUR BOTTOM LINE.

#1BECAUSE GOOGLE DOESN’T LIKE SLOW SITES

Google is the 900-lb. gorilla that directly or indirectly, controls most of the traffic on the World Wide Web. It’s well document-ed that the company’s secret algorithms take web page loading time into account when determining search engine rankings. Even Matt Cutts – who heads up Google’s webspam team which guards against outside efforts to manipulate search rankings – admits as much, saying, “Speeding up your website isn’t just something that can affect your search rankings.”

If capturing high rankings for keywords relevant to your business is important to you – and if you have a web site, it should be – then any factor which could negatively impact your rankings should get your full attention.

But here’s some good news: unlike scoring a top 3 ranking on Google for a very competitive keyword, cranking up your web site speed is pretty easy to do and doesn’t involve magic incantations or meetings in back rooms with shady consultants.

#2HIGH BOUNCE RATE AND LOW TIME ON SITE

If your prospective or current customers can’t get to your products, information, or tools – whatever it is that your site offers – quickly and easily, they’re likely to look elsewhere.

Slow-loading web pages are the online equivalent of dawdling drivers in the freeway fast lane. But when it comes to the internet, web surfers have an unlimited number of open lanes to choose from. Your direct competitors

will benefit most from the poor performance of your web site. So don’t let an overworked server

moonlight for your competition.

Check your web site analytics and pay special attention to bounce rate and average visit duration. If you see those metrics moving in the wrong direction (bounce rate going up and average visit going down) over a period of time, it may be a warning sign that your sluggish web site is putting a crimp on your business.

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#3LOST REVENUE

Extensive research and experimentation has been conducted, proving a correlation between web site speed and revenue.

For example, when e-commerce web site Shopzilla.com redesigned their site and reduced page load times from approximately 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds, key metrics improved. Performance gains included an upturn in conversions from 7% to 12%, and a 25% boost in page views.

And in a test conducted by Live.com (now Bing.com), experiments with delays of various lengths added to page load time showed a 2.8% revenue drop for a 1-second delay, and a 4.3% drop resulting from a 2-second delay.

For more hard data on the relationship between site speed and revenue, be sure to check out KISSmetrics’ excellent infographic, http://bit.ly/kiss-site-speed.

Every business is different, so there is no universal constant for calculating the net negative impact of poor web site performance on revenue. But one thing is certain; a slow web site isn’t advancing your objectives.

#4DAMAGES YOUR BRAND

For many companies, the web site is responsible for making the first impression on a prospective customer. In an era where even micro-sized kitchen-table start-ups are capable of fielding excellent web sites, a poorly performing site is unacceptable. A slow web site tells first-time visitors that your company is out of touch, doesn’t care, or is just plain clueless.

Your web site should be your hardest working brand ambassador, wearing its game face 24x7. If your site can’t keep up, maybe it’s time for your web server to take a seat on the bench.

#5DYNAMIC WEB SITES AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS SUCK (SERVER RESOURCES)

Not long ago, web sites built with content management systems (CMS) and other database-powered dynamic architectures were the exception. But today, most new sites or re-designs of existing sites make use of a CMS and/or other dynamic features.

This means every page served triggers at least one, and most likely multiple requests to a database. Dynamically building one page for a single user can exert a load that’s equivalent to serving dozens of static HTML pages. Caching and other techniques can mitigate some of this load, but the CMS and related software like plug-ins still impose a much greater load on the server than a static site.

The most popular CMS, WordPress now powers 20% of all web sites, according to a 2013 study by W3Techs. It’s well known that WordPress can be very demanding on server resources, and many WordPress-powered sites perform poorly. In particular, most shared hosting accounts are suitable only for running very small and lightly visited web sites. Larger sites with heavier traffic need either shared hosting services highly optimized for WordPress, or better yet, dedicated hosting for best performance.

EVERY SECOND COUNTS

A 1 SECOND PAGE DELAY COULD POTENTIALLY

COST YOU $2.5 MILLION IN LOST SALES EVERY YEAR.

*FOR A SITE WITH AVERAGE REVENUE OF $100,000 PER DAY

A 1 SECOND DELAY (OR 3 SECONDS OF WAITING)

DECREASES CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

BY ABOUT 16%



#6 REDUCED EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

It’s not just your customers who depend on your company’s web site. Your employees do also. They need fast access to information in real time, and your web site is their go-to choice. There’s nothing worse than fielding a phone call from a prospective client, hitting the web site to look up a fact or figure on the fly, and getting caught flat-footed while you wait for a search to run or a page to load.

Your employees are also saddled with piloting your painfully slow CMS to maintain critical web site content. If your CMS- powered site takes its sweet time when it comes to serving pages to visitors, the user experience on the back end will be even worse. Opening an existing content page to make minor edits can become a cumbersome chore, and creating new pages is an exercise in frustration.

#7COMPROMISES YOUR ACCESS TO TOP TALENT

Even in a soft hiring market, the brightest talent is always in demand. And now that the economy is back on more solid footing, competition for the best candidates is heating up. Your web site is the first place a potential hire will go to learn more about your company. If your slow site tells them you’re skimping on technology investments, why would they think you’re willing to invest in them?

#8 WEAKENS YOUR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

There’s an old adage, “no man is an island.” That truism applies equally, if not more so to companies. Businesses today are more dependent than ever on strategic partnerships and other business relationships. Your web site is an important channel for interacting with your supply chain and value creation partners.

If contacts at these organizations are handicapped by problems with your web site, your company’s reputation with partners can only suffer. Strategic relationships last only as long as both parties share in the benefits. So make sure you watch out for your partner’s interests, so they continue to keep yours in mind.

#9SHORT-CIRCUITS YOUR EXIT STRATEGY

Every company should have an exit strategy – even if an IPO, merger, or acquisition isn’t crucial to your future. Developing an exit strategy is the best way to understand changes in the value of your business, and to evaluate various ‘what if’ scenarios.

But if you are serious about making an exit at the right time and right price, your web site will need to play its part. Private equity firms and corporate buyers will check you out the same way potential customers do – by visiting your web site. If they are greeted by a cantankerous, clanking mess of a web site, they’re likely to keep looking for more promising investment opportunities.



KEY TAKEAWAY

Complex technology can be difficult to understand, even for IT specialists. But it doesn’t take a tech guru to figure out that a slow web site is bad for any business. The good news is speeding up your company’s web site is relatively simple. The first step is identifying the resource requirements of your web site architec-ture and the users it supports. Once those factors are known, selecting the appropriate infrastructure for hosting your site is a straightforward process.

#10ALL THE WAYS YOU’LL NEVER KNOW Thousands of people visit your web site every month, and most of them are anonymous. Maybe one of those visitors is a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, writing a feature on businesses in your industry. Or maybe it’s someone from a major technology company, looking for a partner to collaborate with on a business solution. But you’ll never know they were there, because your web site wasn’t ready for your moment in the spotlight. Don’t be caught looking like you’re out to lunch when opportunity comes knocking.

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10 Reasons Why A Slow Website is Hurting Your Company

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