Test My Site, an updated Google tool, delivers a better, faster and more user-friendly mobile experience
Every second it takes for your pages to load, you risk losing both new and existing users.
Several factors come into play when businesses build their websites and blogs, but most important among them is ensuring that your website provides the best experience possible for the user, especially on mobile devices.
Visuals – color schemes, font size, text placement and overall layout – are important, but they’re also subjective. Page load speed, on the contrary, is highly objective, not to mention measurable.
Numerous case studies, including one conducted by Pinterest, which increased its search engine traffic and sign-ups by 15 percent when the social media web and mobile application company reduced wait times by 40 percent, have concluded that speed performance plays a huge roll in the success of retaining users.
At best, slow performance causes annoying delays, but if your mobile website or blog is unresponsive or takes too long to load, users may give up and point their browser elsewhere.
As a business, you want users to read your website content and blog posts, but for every second it takes for your pages to load, you risk losing both new and existing users.
DoubleClick by Google found 53 percent of mobile site visits were cast aside if a page took longer than three seconds to load. In that same study, sites that loaded within 5 seconds had 70 percent longer sessions, 35 percent lower bounce rates and 25 percent higher ad viewability than sites taking nearly four times longer to load.
Just how important is it to ensure your users experience a fast and easy mobile experience?
According to a study released by The State of Online Retail Performance, “a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact conversion rate by up to 20 percent.”
It was that statistic that propelled Think with Google, a one-stop online shop for consumer, industry and marketing trends and insight, to create Test My Site, a tool that enables businesses to optimize their blogs and websites on mobile devices. Specifically, the tool allows businesses to see:
- The speed of both their entire site and of individual pages
- Whether their site/page speed is faster or slower compared to the prior month
- Whether their site speed/page speed ranks fast, average or slow
- How their site speed compares to others in the industry
- The potential impact of site speed on revenue
- A detailed list of recommended fixes to increase speed on up to five pages on their site
- A complete report to share with colleagues
With Google’s updated Test My Site, businesses now have a single destination to measure, benchmark and take action on mobile site speed—the first step toward a better mobile experience for your clients.
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Tags: digital marketing, google, PR news roundup, SEO