If your site takes too long to load, most potential customers will quit and leave your online store before it even has a chance to be seen. Not only that, but Google now includes the site speed in its ranking algorithm. This means that your site’s speed effects the search engine optimization (SEO), so if your site is slow, visitors will become impatient, and your site will lose ranking in the search engines.
For e-commerce websites, the impact of slow page loading is even more severe. Slow websites lead to increased bounce rates and shopping cart abandonment.
Back in 2013, the world’s largest retailer, Amazon lost $66,240 every minute in a 30 minutes downtime episode. In fact, it has been speculated that this giant retailer could lose up to $1.6 billion in sales due to a second’s delay.
Your e-commerce site (or any other site) may not be as big as Amazon, but you will still incur losses if your website loading is slow.
To the visitor, a fast website offers a sense of moving forwards to reach his goal. The goal could be anything from buying a trendy piece of jewelry or the latest line of design jewelry. The faster they move towards their goal, the more satisfied they are. The opposite is true, as well. Slow websites lead to a decline in user satisfaction thanks to unsatisfactory user experience.
