Slow page loading is something no website owner ever wants to deal with. You can have the most awesome-looking website or the best products in your Amazon storefront, but there’s one thing that comes before anything else: loading speed.
According to recent studies, 40% of users will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This might seem like an unrealistic expectation, but it is quite accurate if you take a look at the average loading times.
Users want fast results, but if you have an amazing website and no one stays to see it, you are essentially wasting all that creative effort.
A slow loading page can quietly drive away potential customers and reduce traffic. Knowing what makes a website slow and how to speed it up is essential for keeping visitors, improving their experience, and making your online presence successful.
How much will users wait for your website to load?
When we talk about our SEO scores, we tend to focus on the importance of engaging, highly relevant content. However, there are other essential elements that can make or break your site, no matter how curated your content is. For instance:
- Interactivity
- Stability
- User experience
- Loading speed
Search engines like Google scrutinize a page’s average loading speeds when determining its search rank. So, a slow loading page has a direct SEO impact, threatening to slash your traffic if you fail to diagnose or fix the issue in good time.
Before we talk about the details that go into slow web page loading, it is important to define what ‘slow’ means for online users who are rushing into things and want to get everything done quickly. So, how long is too long for a web page to load?
- Ideal loading time is under 2 Seconds. If a website loads in under 2 seconds, it feels almost instant, providing a smooth and pleasant experience.
- Acceptable loading time is around 2-3 Seconds. You might notice the wait, but it’s usually short enough that it doesn’t bother you much.
- Borderline loading times range around 3-5 Seconds. A loading time of 3-5 seconds can make you feel impatient, and you might consider leaving the site.
- Slow loading times are over 5 seconds. If a website takes more than 5 seconds to load, you’re likely to give up and look for information elsewhere.
- Very slow web page loading is over 10 Seconds. At this point, almost no one sticks around. Waiting more than 10 seconds for a page to load is just too long.
How Does Google Use This Data?
A key component of Google’s search ranking algorithm is Core Web Vitals, a collection of user-focused metrics aimed at providing a smooth and frictionless user experience (UX). Google uses web page loading times to measure user experience.
Slow page loading tends to frustrate users, leading them to leave a site quickly—a behavior known as a high bounce rate. Additionally, users spend less time on slow loading pages, resulting in a short dwell time.
Both high bounce rates and short dwell times signal to Google that your site may not meet users’ needs, which can negatively impact your search ranking.
Core Web Vitals
A key component of Google’s search ranking algorithm is Core Web Vitals, a collection of user-focused metrics aimed at providing a smooth and frictionless user experience (UX). Two key metrics that Google’s CWV focuses on are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how quickly the main content of a page loads.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) looks at the visual stability of the page as it loads.
- First input delay (FID) measures the speed at which a user’s browser responds after first interacting with a page (e.g. clicking on a link). It’s a measure of a page’s interactivity; an optimum response speed is 100ms or less
The data which feeds Core Web Vitals comes from something called the CrUX report, which gathers anonymized data about the performance of your site from the users who visit your URL.
These metrics are directly related to how fast your page loads and are crucial for a positive user experience.
Based on this assessment, Google assigns your page one of three labels:
- A fast-loading page earns a Good rating, which can significantly boost your rankings.
- A slow loading page might receive a Needs Improvement or Poor rating, making it harder to rank well in search results.
What Causes Slow Web Page Loading?
Slow page loading is rarely the result of a singular issue, so it’s likely there are several factors impacting your load speeds.
- Large images and videos. When a browser tries to load these hefty files, it takes more time. To speed up your website, use smaller images and compress them to ensure they load faster.
- Too many elements on your website. For example, as images, scripts, and stylesheets, each requiring a separate load. Having too many items can overwhelm the browser and slow things down. Reducing the number of elements on your page and combining files can help your website load more quickly.
- Poorly written code. Messy or complicated code can hinder performance. Clean and simple code allows the browser to load your page faster. Regularly checking and improving your code can keep your site running smoothly.
- Speed and location of your web server. If your server is slow or located far from your audience, it increases loading times. Upgrading to a better hosting service and using Content Delivery Networks (CDN) can make your site load faster.
- Plugins and widgets. While plugins and widgets add features to your site, each adds extra code that needs processing. Limiting the number of plugins and using only essential ones can enhance your site’s speed.
- Caché problems. Caching stores some data locally in the browser, helping your site load faster on repeat visits. If caching isn’t set up correctly, it can slow down your site. Properly configuring caching can ensure faster loading times for returning visitors.
- High traffic and network issues. If your server experiences a lot of traffic or network congestion, it may struggle to keep up, causing delays. Using scalable hosting solutions and load balancing can help manage traffic spikes more effectively.
Multiple HTTP requests
Having a vast amount of JavaScript, CSS and image files will lead to your site needing to make a number of HTTP requests in order to load each of these elements, which will inevitably result in increased loading times.
This can be compounded by having too many ads on your website; while this is a great revenue-boosting tactic, it’s likely to increase the number of HTTP requests and further decelerate your pages.
What happens when Amazon Loads Slowly?
Slow page loading can lead to problems for your customers and negatively impact your Amazon SEO strategy.
During peak times like Black Friday, the high traffic on Amazon can slow down the site. Large images and videos on your product pages can also take longer to load. Additionally, the detailed information you include, such as product descriptions and reviews, can make the pages heavier and slower.
Tools like ads and analytics add extra load time, and if Amazon’s servers are far from your customers, it can further delay loading times.
When your pages load slowly, customers might leave quickly, leading to higher bounce rates. This can frustrate shoppers and reduce their likelihood of making a purchase or returning to your page.
Even small delays can significantly impact your sales, as customers prefer faster-loading pages. Thus, slow page loading can also hurt your SEO on Amazon.
Amazon’s search algorithm considers page speed when ranking products. Slow pages are less likely to appear at the top of search results, making it harder for potential buyers to find your products.
Additionally, if Amazon can’t quickly scan your pages due to slow loading times, your products might not be indexed properly.
Slow mobile pages are especially problematic since many customers shop on their phones. Negative user behavior, like leaving a page quickly, also sends bad signals to Amazon’s algorithm, further lowering your rankings.
How can I speed up slow page loading?
So, we’ve determined what might be causing your pages to load slowly, and how this can have an impact on your site’s ability to rank. But what can you do to boost your site’s speed and drive more organic traffic through SEO?
Run a speed test
Run the URL through a speed testing tool, which will help identify the factors that are contributing to its sluggishness.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a good place to star. It will not only assign your URL an overall performance score, but it’ll also pinpoint the main areas of concern.
What’s more, the tool will provide guidance on how to shave precious seconds off your loading times.
Use a Content Delivery Network
A CDN comprises a group of geographically-dispersed servers that combine to speed up content delivery over the web.
Since speed of delivery is often linked to the geographical location of a server, a CDN boosts transfer speed and reduces latency by ensuring the shortest possible distance between a user and the website they’re visiting.
By caching content such as images and HTML so it can be fetched as and when needed, it can deliver that content instantaneously.
Optimize images
Always check the file size of your images before uploading them.Ideally you shouldn’t be including any image files on your site that are over 1MB.
Stick to JPEG files, too, rather than PNG or GIF. There are plenty of tools available that can help you compress and optimize images for upload.
Upgrade your hosting
If your website host isn’t delivering fast loading speeds and reliable performance, then it might be time to ditch them and look for a new provider.
If you’re using a shared hosting solution, consider upgrading to cloud or VPS hosting.
These solutions can usually guarantee faster speeds, while they’re typically scalable on demand to ensure you maintain fast speeds even during periods of high traffic.
Minify your code
If your backend code contains any unnecessary elements (essentially anything that a computer doesn’t require in order to understand and process the code), minifying your code by reducing CSS and JavaScript files should help to get your site running faster.
This will also ensure your site isn’t having to make excessive HTTP requests, which is another factor that can contribute to lagging speeds.
Scan for malware and viruses
If you’ve exhausted several angles and your pages are still running slow, there might be an underlying security issue that’s causing your site to perform poorly. Running your site through a malware-scanning tool will help identify if this is the case.
Installing robust security defenses such as firewalls and DDoS mitigation tools (many of these are offered by hosting and CDN providers) will ensure your site is protected against security threats.
Final Thoughts
By now, you should have a clearer understanding of why your website might load slowly and how this can affect organic traffic through SEO. If your site is experiencing slow page load times, follow the steps outlined above to identify and fix the issues.
Improving your website’s loading speed will help enhance user experience and boost your rankings in SERPs.For more insights into marketing and SEO, visit our website. Dive deeper into our Amazon business growth strategies to optimize your online presence and drive more traffic to your site.
Author
Ecommerce Platforms has been created to help you through every aspect of ecommerce entrepreneurship. We compare website builders, show you how to launch your very own site, and provide useful advice to help you make your ecommerce business a huge success.
Antonella Fleitas is a freelance content writer from Argentina. Antonella worked with many projects to create fact-based, evergreen content about science, language learning, and culture. Her main goal is to build a strong content foundation for her clients, based on meaningful stories that people can learn from.
