April 5, 2022
Imagine if you could improve your organic search ranking, increase your conversions across all marketing channels AND do all of this whilst reducing your CPA? You’d best believe there’s a way, and there’s a strong chance it’s a factor that’s been overlooked. We caught up with our Associate Director, Sarah Williams, and Matthew Pearson of ecommerce agency, Techquity, to unpick the importance of your site speed in relation to paid marketing success!
What’s so important about site speed?
Matty:
We can’t underestimate the importance of site speed, a lot of ecommerce websites offer so many great options in terms of functionality, but speed is what makes all the difference when it comes to conversions. I’m about to throw a few stat bombs your way, but it’s the clearest way to understand the significance of something so often overlooked!
There’s been a lot of research carried out on the impact of page load speed on sales figures. Research by Portent suggested that the ideal load time for a webpage was between just 0 and 4 seconds, with the highest conversion rates occurring with load times between 0 and 2 seconds - rapid!
Unbounce also reported that almost 70% of consumers openly admit that page speed impacts their willingness to make a purchase from an online store, which isn’t really too unsurprising.
Similarly, in retail, Google states that even a one second delay in mobile load times can impact mobile conversions by up to 20%!
How does it relate to my paid marketing efforts?
Sarah:
We need to understand that more than half of mobile page visits are abandoned if a page takes over 3 seconds to load. Brands shouldn’t be wasting their advertising budgets through Google Ads clicks when they are sending users through to sluggish, non responsive landing pages. To put it into perspective, with the stat above in mind, if a brand was to spend £10,000/month on Google Ads budget with a page taking over 3 seconds to load, they’ve essentially wasted £5,000 in ad spend!
Which brings us on to the topic of advertising and site speed going hand in hand....
Google ultimately wants to hold a great reputation for linking users through to highly relevant products/services they’ve searched for and deliver the most seamless user experience once on site too. Which means rewarding brands with higher quality scores for those that can achieve a great landing page experience and lightning fast site speed - and with that comes lower CPC’s for those brands!
Why pay more per click, waste advertising budgets AND then deliver a poor user experience once they land on your site? You can check out the impact we made by improving quality scores for one of our clients here.
What do I need to do?
Matty:
First things first - test the page load speed of your online store. As easy as it is to bury our heads in the sand and not open that potential can of worms, keeping your business in the dark about something that can make a huge difference to the conversions of your online store helps nobody.
The easiest way to see how your site’s performing in terms of speed is to run a quick test using one of the free online tools like PageSpeed. It takes no time at all but can be a real eye opener! If the results aren’t pretty, that’s where Techquity comes in.
We’re focused on building show stopping & high performing websites for online retailers using Aero Commerce, a revolutionary ecommerce platform built to be faster, more flexible, accessible and scalable, with reduced infrastructure costs.
Our clients typically see a 55% reduction in page load time and 67% increase in conversions which can lay a really solid foundation for your paid marketing activity to flourish. Check out our recent results here.
There’s a lot to be said for your marketing efforts linking back to the speed of your online store, and this goes for every marketing channel you’re utilising in your digital strategy, not just Paid Search. If you’re keen to discuss your current online store performance, get in touch with the guys at Techquity using talk@techquity.co.uk. Alternatively if you’re looking to lift the lid on how your Paid Search campaigns are performing, our team is happy to conduct a free audit. Leave your details here and we’ll be in touch.