Picture this: a potential customer searches for a service you offer, clicks on your website, and then... nothing. They are staring at a blank screen, waiting for something to happen. After a few seconds of frustration, they hit the back button and click on your competitor instead.
That scenario plays out thousands of times every day across North Brisbane businesses. And the worst part? Most business owners have no idea it is happening.
The Numbers Do Not Lie
Here is the uncomfortable truth about page speed: 53% of mobile users will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Let that sink in. More than half of your potential customers could be leaving before they even see what you have to offer.
But it gets worse. For every additional second your website takes to load, your conversion rate drops by an average of 4.4%. If your website takes 5 seconds to load instead of 2, you could be losing nearly 15% of your potential sales.
Google Cares About Speed (And So Should You)
Since 2021, Google has used page speed as a ranking factor for search results. They call them Core Web Vitals, and they measure things like how fast your page loads, how quickly it becomes interactive, and whether elements jump around while loading.
In plain English: if your website is slow, Google will push you down in search results. And if your competitor in Brendale or Strathpine has a faster website with similar content, they will likely rank above you.
Mobile Users Are Especially Impatient
Here in Australia, over 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. People are searching for businesses while sitting in traffic on Gympie Road, waiting at the train station in Petrie, or grabbing a coffee in Kallangur.
Mobile connections can be inconsistent, which makes page speed even more critical. A website that loads fine on your office computer might crawl on someone's phone using mobile data.
What Makes Websites Slow?
Before you can fix a slow website, you need to understand what is slowing it down. Here are the most common culprits:
- Oversized images: That beautiful photo of your shopfront might be 5MB when it only needs to be 200KB.
- Cheap hosting: Budget hosting services cram thousands of websites onto the same server.
- Too many plugins: Every plugin on your website adds extra code that needs to load.
- Unoptimised code: Bloated themes and unnecessary scripts can add seconds to your load time.
- No caching: Without proper caching, your server has to rebuild the entire page from scratch every time.
How to Speed Up Your Website
The good news is that most speed issues can be fixed. Use tools like TinyPNG to compress images before uploading them. Consider upgrading to a managed hosting provider. Remove plugins you are not using. Enable caching on your website.
Test your site speed at Google PageSpeed Insights. It is free and will give you a score out of 100 with specific recommendations. Aim for at least 70 on mobile.
When Is It Time for a New Website?
Sometimes, no amount of optimisation can save an old website. If your site was built more than five years ago, runs on an outdated platform, or was built without performance in mind, you might be better off starting fresh.
A modern website built with performance in mind can load in under a second. Compare that to older sites that struggle to load in five or six seconds, and the business impact becomes clear.
Ready to Speed Things Up?
At Red Ox Digital, we build websites that are fast by default. Every site we create is optimised for speed, mobile-friendly, and built to help you rank on Google.
If your current website is letting you down, let us chat about what a new site could do for your business. We are based right here in Dakabin and work with businesses across North Brisbane. Book a free discovery call and we will give you honest advice on the best path forward.