A report on page speed revealed nearly 70% of consumers say a website’s loading time affects their willingness to buy.
Further, 81% of marketers are aware that page speed impacts their conversions, but the majority aren’t making it a priority.
About 73% of marketers think that improving page speed is either somewhat urgent or very urgent, although only 3% say improving page speed is their top priority in 2019.
This data is included in a 2019 report on page speed stats and trends from Unbounce, which is based on responses from 750 consumers and 395 marketers.
Most websites are too slow, according to the report, with the average page speed clocking in at 15 seconds.
That’s troublesome when you consider that half of visitors will leave if they’re forced to wait longer than 3 seconds.
Not only will page speed affect conversions, but it can negatively affect organic and paid search results as well.
“Because [websites are] too slow, they’re likely paying more than they need to for their search ads—and disappearing completely from organic search results.”
How Consumers Respond to Slow Sites
If there’s a silver lining to all of this, it’s that users are more likely to blame their own internet connection versus blaming the website.
When encountering a slow website, almost half of consumers say they’ll try to refresh a page at least once.
But 22% of consumers say they’ll close the tab, and 14% say they’ll visit a competitor’s site.
According to the report, Android users are more patient than iOS users.
Of those who will wait no longer than 3 seconds for a page to load, 64% were iOS users compared to 36% who were Android users.
Of those who would be willing to wait 11-13 seconds, 36% were iOS users compared to 61% who were Android users.
With that said, marketers should be aware that iOS accounts for 65% of mobile phones in the US.
What’s the Solution?
A quick win when it comes to improving page speed is to remove unnecessary animation and video.
Half of all consumers say they’d be willing to give up animation and video for faster load times.
A quarter of respondents said they could even live without images.
Here are some further resources where you can learn more about improving your website’s page speed:
