How Site Speed Impacts Conversion

In today's budget-constrained environment, there is a high level of scrutiny on how products and services drive business outcomes — and eCommerce is no exception. When it comes toonline shopping, it’s no secret that if your site takes too long to load shoppers will leave without buying, lowering your site's overall conversion rate.

Is there Is there further evidence to support that faster page load times lead to higher conversion rates? Yes, there is.

A recent analysis conducted has confirmed the strong connection between page load time and conversion rate.

In the context of an eCommerce site, the average page load time (using onload timing metric) was captured for all sessions over several days (no sampling). Sessions were placed into ten separate page load time buckets(fastest on the left in the graph below and slowest on the right) where each bucket contained the same number of sessions. The conversion rate was calculated for the given sessions for each page load time bucket.

The results surrounding conversion rate

A staircase-like graph illustrates better conversion rates at faster page load times and a steady drop as pages took longer to load:

In this example, comparing the average page load time of 2.2 to 3.2 seconds shows a stark difference in the conversion rate. When translated into revenue, one second can be very significant.

Ok, we know what you’re thinking… it would be easy to cherry-pick a single site to match this story. However, the analysis was run on many sites and the results were similar:

While Conversion rates vary between these sites as well as the specific impact of page load time on conversion rates, the trend of slower load times leading to lower conversion rates is consistent.

How to optimize site speed to help your conversion rate

There are many factors that impact site speed, and each one needs constant and careful management. Taking the DIY approach can be sort of like managing a long escalator that constantly needs fixing, and sometimes forces disgruntled visitors to take the stairs or find an alternative.

Leveraging a faster eCommerce site

eCommerce professionals understand very well the significance of even just a fractional improvement in conversion rate and how that translates to appreciable business outcomes. And although harder to measure, they are also keen on providing a modern and consistent shopping experience that won’t add friction to the buying process. Now you can also better understand how site speed positively impacts the bottom line, an imperative element when making any type of investment, especially when spending is tight.

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