Your Website is the Digital Foundation for Your Business

Your website is the foundation of your online marketing activities. If you look at all the marketing channels and techniques, what they actually do is bring visitors to your website. And the main purpose of a website is to turn these visitors into customers. In digital marketing, this is called conversion. Bad web design causes you to waste time and money on other marketing methods. Because you don’t need more visitors if you can’t turn them into customers.

Since the website is the foundation of your digital presence, it makes sense that it should be as good as it can be. What makes a web design good? First, it should clearly explain it’s purpose and make it incredibly easy to convert. Second, and most importantly, it should be well-designed, SEO-friendly, and FAST. With over half of internet traffic on a mobile device, Google uses speed as a major ranking factor. Here are 5 more reasons your business MUST have a FAST website.

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.

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.