What is the load speed of your website?
When measuring load speed, you need to keep in mind that the only useful measurement is the last mile load speed. This means the time it takes for an end user to load your site, with nothing loaded in the cache, using whatever browser and operating system they are on.
Getting your webmaster to test load speed is not going to give you the same accuracy of results.
Our web performance partner gave us the shock of our life some time ago, the last mile load time performance of www.iquantum.com.au was 9 seconds, when the benchmark is 2 seconds. It turned out that the structure of our site was quite old and we needed to update the technology platform. This has improved load times significantly.
The attention span of people browsing web pages is standardised to around 5 seconds. So if your page is taking any longer than this to load, people may be clicking away from your site before they’ve even seen anything.
There are 2 major reasons for having a fast loading site
- User Experience – will prospects wait 9 seconds – possibly not
- Your load speed now effects your Google ranking
Google adding load speed to ranking factors
There has been some negative reaction to Google’s inclusion of load speed in page ranking factors. Some critics argue that platforms such as Analytics and AdSense hinder load speed, suggesting it’s hypocritical of Google to expect site owners to use these tools but then penalise them for sluggish load speeds.
Google measures load speed by assessing:
- How long a page takes to load (measure in the Google tool bar)
- How the page itself responds to Googlebot
Google spokesman Matt Cutts is quick to point out that load speed is just one of 200 factors. And that quality content, relevance, value and reputation remain the primary indicators for high page ranking.
The bottom line is, users want pages to load fast. Their satisfaction level at any website is diminished by slow page loads. This makes sense and it’s clearly why Google has picked up on load speed as a pertinent issue.
If you are interested in getting your real load speed measured, it’s worth checking out services by Gomez. Gomez are the only people that measure the last mile, most other measures are done at the server level, which is not what your users will experience.
As a business owner it’s not your job to understand the technology of load speeds. But you need to ensure you are working with a web developer who has the most up to date knowledge and access to the best technology for your requirements.
iQuantum specialises in creating business requirements for web developers to follow. These help make sure your site has performance levels that are up to standard.
