Fast website loading and why you need it

Optimise your website loading speed

Having a fast website is one of those things you instinctly know is important but you may be unsure why. You may also be unaware of a very easy way to test your website’s speed, but if you use Chrome there is!

Many of us are internet savvy enough now to know that good design, clear mesasaging and intent as well as great SEO all go towards attracting and then engaging with your audience. An oft overlooked part of this is the speed of your website and this can mean all the hard work and effort put into the former can be undone by the latter.

Why is a fast website important?

The first and obvious answer is something we’ve all experienced – frustration at waiting for a site to load. Here are some hard facts:

  • According to Amazon, a 1 second load lag time would cost them $1.6 billion on sales (link)
  • Google have shown that a lag time of 400ms would result in 440 million abandoned sessions / month (link)
  • In America, Walmart experienced a 2% conversion increase for every 1 second of improvement (link)
  • Since 2016 Google have added page load speed to there algorithms so it will now improve your ranking

What can I do to get a fast website?

As mentioned, if you use Chrome there’s a very simple way to check your site speed – Lighthouse. You can access this via Web Developer tools.

  1. In Chrome, open incognito mode (Control + Shift + N). A new, dark browser window should open up. Type your website address here.
  2. A panel should open up at the bottom of the web page – this is Web Developer Tools. Across the top you will see tabs for Element, Console etc. The last of these will be Lighthouse.
  3. Click on this and the ‘Generate Report’. Default will be for Desktop, but ther is an option to choose ‘Mobile’.
  4. Go and make a coffer whilst Lighthouse does its thing. When you get back you should see the generated report.

What BigPlane can do to help

When you get your Lighthouse report, you’ll see that it is helpfully colour-coded in a traffic light style; red (bad) to green (good). Hopefully your site won’t have any red and you should be pleased with anything high amber and above (that’s 70% +). That’s why I was super chuffed when I saw the results for bigplane.co.uk – all green and in the nineties!

This was so pleasing as all the techniques I use to optimise every site I build was being relected by the positive results of the Lighthouse report. I ran the test on all my other recent sites and was pleased to see nothing below the 80% mark.

Get a BigPlane audit

So if you run the test on your site and get any reds or ambers, please get in touch! I’ll review your site, make suggestions and then, if agreed, implement any necessary changes.

Lighthouse report for bigplane.co.uk
The bigplane.co.uk Lighthouse scores – something to be proud of!
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