These days, the attention span of the average human is less than that of a goldfish. The sheer amount of content that is available is mind-boggling and you have to fight for every second. The best way to do that is to have a powerful message with a clear call to action. You have to get that message to the viewer quickly — your website needs to load in less than 3 seconds to be effective.

Since people have shorter attention spans, you only have a short time to pitch them on your product or service. In sales, this is called the elevator pitch. You basically have 10-20 seconds, including the loading time of the website, for most people to decide if they will stick around to see more. If your site is slow, many people will bounce before you even get the opportunity to engage them.

At the end of the day it’s really all about one thing: Conversions. You can attract tons of traffic to your website, but if you are not turning them into customers, then you are wasting your time (and theirs). You have a very short amount of time to get your page loaded, make your best pitch, and give potential customers an easy way to take the next step. Any type of performance issue will result in a major reduction in conversions.

Way back in 2010, Google started using site speed as a ranking factor. Through their research, they determined that faster sites created happier users. Because of this, they began ranking faster sites higher in search results. Now, in 2018, as they focus on a mobile-first internet, they have announced that they will now use page speed as a ranking factor in mobile search.

Today, mobile devices account for well over half of all internet traffic and the number keeps growing. This is fine when mobile users have a WiFi connection, but what about then they are on a mobile network? As of 2017, the United States ranked 28th in the world in mobile internet speeds. So, when it comes to testing page speed for mobile users, you have to always assume the worst. These days, a great web design has to be more than just responsive — it has to adapt to mobile networks and still load fast, even on slow networks.