Load Time For CRO
Table of Contents
Load Time: 2024's Most Important CRO Metric #
TikTok, Reels, Shorts - everything is fast. We will scroll to the next reel if it loads longer than 0.5 seconds, so why do you think customers will wait an extra 2 seconds to load all your analytics and marketing scripts, so you can track them? As any conversion rate optimization expert will tell you, speed is crucial.
It is time to change the mindset and shift the paradigm. Give the customer what they want - a fast, reliable, and secure experience. You can run marketing and analytics scripts, but do it in a way that does not affect the user experience.
Social media ads, redirects to your store. #
Imagine the customer journey: they scroll social media, in native mobile apps, everything super fast and smooth. Then they see your ad and they are interested, they click on it and they are redirected to your store. We already lose a few seconds here while Meta or TikTok are triggering the redirect, collecting some data for their own analytics, and then your store starts to load.
Now the customer is already ready to leave even at this stage because they are used to a fast and smooth experience. If your website is not loading fast enough, they will leave.
They might leave so fast that even Google Analytics will not be able to track them, so you will not even know that you lost a potential customer. You will see just lost ad budget and no sales.
Many clicks on ads, no sales. #
You are running ads, you are getting clicks, but no sales. This is a clear sign that your website is not loading fast enough.
You are paying thousands of dollars for ads, instead of spending a few hundred on optimizing your website.
Shopify makes the situation even worse. It is so easy to click and install the app, who cares that they will inject yet another bunch of scripts that will slow down your website.
You are installing the apps to improve the conversion rate, but in the end, you are losing the customers because of the slow load time. Consider working with professional CRO agencies who understand both optimization and performance.
You increase the budget for the ads, again and again, even more clicks and still no sales.
Where to start, how to check the load time? #
Forget about thousands of tools, there is ONE genuine tool that you need to use - Google PageSpeed Insights. The rest are just "Temu versions" of the same tool. Some SEO agencies are even creating their own Site Speed Measurement tools, so they can control it and show you the results that they want.
Check your site speed using Lighthouse and see what the score is, then check it again after improvements and check again, that's it. Getting a proper CRO audit can help identify these and other conversion-killing issues.
To get the most accurate results, do the following. Open Chrome in incognito mode, I think we all know how to open the browser in incognito mode, we all sometimes do it for some "interesting" searches, right? )))
Then open the developer tools, you can do it by right-clicking on the page and selecting "Inspect" or by pressing F12.
Then click on the "Lighthouse" tab, select "Mobile" and "Simulated Slow 4G" and click "Generate report".
In 2024, if you do not want to seem like a turtle in front of your customers, you need to have a score of 90+ on mobile and 95+ on desktop. They scroll fast, changing reels, can you imagine how they see your website if it loads longer than 2 seconds?
There are a few Shopify agencies focused on speed optimization, cro.media can handle full CRO or SEO audit and provide you with a list of improvements that you can do to improve your website speed.
Mobile-first, Ecommerce store in mobile-first world. #
Are you afraid of increasing the revenue, or you are afraid of changing the mindset? Mobile-first is not just a buzzword, it is a reality. Even the big purchases are made on mobile, the only reason customers don't stay on mobile is because your website is not loading fast enough. It is not comfortable to scroll, it is glitchy, it is jumping up and down, it is full of Shopify crap that you installed.
Increase your site mobile speed, improve your revenue it is that simple. Desktop devices are more powerful, they can somehow handle the slow load time, desktop users are more patient, and finally desktop has more space and we can put more content there, but mobile screen is limited and we need to arrange the things in a way that they are easy to access and load fast.
Some folks argue, that - hey man my website is fast, I visit it every day and it loads fast. Well, that's the thing, you visit your own website every day, your browser has the cache, it is not the same as the first-time visitor. Clear the cache, open the incognito mode and check the load time.
Try to be as not patient as your customers, try to be as fast as your customers, nobody wants to spend their time waiting for the website to load.
Google Search ranking and load time. #
Apart from improving user experience, site speed is also a key factor in search engine optimization (SEO).
Higher rankings on search engines like Google boost your business's visibility to potential customers. Google, which held 92.47% of the global search engine market as of January 2021, considers site speed a crucial ranking factor. Since May 2021, faster websites have been rewarded with better rankings on Google, making it easier for new customers to discover your business.
Some statistics and facts for load time and CRO. #
The average time it takes to fully load a mobile landing page is 22 seconds, according to a new analysis. Yet, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. This discrepancy highlights a significant issue: slow load times are costing you potential customers and revenue.
The research, commissioned by Google and conducted by 55 and Deloitte, examined 37 top European and American brand sites across four sectors: retail, luxury, travel, and lead generation (e.g., insurance or car dealership sites). Mobile load times were tracked hourly over 30 days at the end of last year, with results updated in real time against various typical mobile purchase journey metrics.