Don’t Use Average Site Speed When Testing Your Website
Don’t Use Average Site Speed When Testing Your Website
Google Analytics has a site speed graph that shows Average Page Load Time. It is important to reduce this to improve usability and increase conversions. However, if you are not careful these statistics can give you the wrong conclusions.
For example, the table below shows that the USA and the UK have load times of about 5 seconds. However, Turkey, which has a good number of users, is at 13 seconds of load time.
Additional countries which have few users such as Vietnam and Sri Lanka also have slow load times.
If a 5 second load time is acceptable and the slow countries are not important markets, it may not be worthwhile to improve site load time. Especially if this requires reduced functionality.
Website load time varies significantly by country
Site Speed: Mobile vs Desktop
Mobile Web site speed is almost always slower than Desktop. Some B2B companies may have their clients coming almost exclusively through desktop. However, one factor Google uses to rank your site is site speed, and it prioritizes mobile data (known as “mobile-first” ranking).
Increasing site speed of your website is an important for SEO, usability and conversion optimization. Use Google Analytics to exactly where you need to improve. Don’t fall into the trap of reviewing the average speed without drilling down deeper by country, mobile vs desktop and other parameters that are important to your website.