We all hate to wait but what is page speed and why does it matter? Well, page speed is generally accepted to mean the time it takes for a website page to “render” or completely display, also known as “load”. If a page is slow – over 5 seconds say, then it’s quite likely a visitor will click away and go somewhere else which is known as a “bounce”. Bounce rates can be measured and Google (and the other search engines) will downgrade a website if the bounce rate is more than about 25%. So it’s very important to have your website optimised for speed and if your website, and especially your home page is slow to render (anything over 5 seconds)  then you really need to take action.

You can check your website for speed using free online services such as Google’s Page Speed Insights or GTMetrix. There are many others but these are the ones we use. Of course the speed of the page load has to be balanced by the design, the target market expectations and other factors. While it’s important that your website doesn’t put people off with long load times it’s also important that it’s not ugly!

If you find this confusing, don’t worry – we’ll be happy to check things out for you and give you free and professional advice. Just get in touch..