Why speed optimized WordPress themes are necessary for your Website? – Part 2

Let us start with a small instance. You are running a small eCommerce website to sell your handcrafted bags. Your business is small but is gaining trust of customers and you’re making good money. After a few months, you notice that the business is declining, especially repeat business. A customer who buys something from you, never returns again. You start to think of the reasons for this. You hire a business consultant, a web developer, an SEO expert to help you out. They charge you for all their services, assure you of better results and then nothing considerable happens. Why? Because your website is slow and customers can’t wait for it to take minutes to load a product for them to see and buy. They take their business to somewhere else.

Google VP Marissa Mayer asked users if they’d like 10 or 30 results per page. Hands down, web users wanted 30 results per page.

But when Google rolled out the changes and tested for speed their jaws dropped. Traffic had dropped by 20% on those pages with 30 results. Reason? Those pages were slow to load.

Amazon experienced a similar drop in traffic and revenue due to a fraction-of-a-second load delay

What are the major reasons that make a website slow? Here they are:

  1. The theme used for developing the website (front-end design)
  2. Excessive use of Flash and/or videos.
  3. Pictures and photos are not optimized for size.
  4. Dynamic web language scripts which affect the server.
  5. Uncompressed web pages.
  6. Bulky and un-optimized code: this usually occurs when multiple web developers have worked on your website or various new features have been added over time.
  7. 3rd party scripts and APIs.
  8. The hosting you have selected for your website.

How does it affect you?

Site speed affects your search ranking. Search rankings limit the traffic to your website and result is loss of members and money.

The online marketing company Summit highlight the real cost of a slow eCommerce site. See below in the report:

http://www.summit.co.uk/slow-ecommerce-website-speed-costs-sales/

Strange Loop puts it like this: a one-second delay can cost you 7% percent of sales.

strangeloop

Now, we know that the major reasons for a slow website are with the front-end of the website; the theme used to build the website.

A theme is your website’s paint job. It’s what appeal and engages the visitor. It’s what makes your competitor’s to envy you. And, it’s what makes your site painfully slow.

Choosing the right theme plays a major role in the speed of your WordPress site. A high quality theme isn’t about how it looks; it’s about how well it has been built and how well it conforms to the WordPress Theme Development Standards. Look for actively developed, well supported themes.

Advantages of a fast website:

  1. Better User Experience:

It is very well known truth that people love fast websites and despise the slow. So, if you care about your users, you should care about the speed of your website. Slow website loading times are one of the largest contributing factors to website abandonment. According to KISSmetrics,  47% of consumers expect a website page to load within two seconds. If it doesn’t, they’re not likely to hang around.

  1. Improved Search Engine Rankings

This simply means, if your website ranks higher on Google and can be seen on the first page of the search result, you get more traffic and more business.

  1. Higher Conversion Rates

If your website loads faster than your competition, you’ve won the customer. This is backed by numerous researches conducted on websites.  The most well known statistic is from Amazon, who reported an increase of 1% revenue for every 100 millisecond improvement in page speed.

Let’s conclude!

You need a fast website to win the competition and for that you have to have a speed optimized theme, which we are here. We can proudly say and guarantee, a faster website with our theme than most of the themes available in the market. Reason? We know the truth and understand the importance of it. Check out our fastest loading themes on the internet !!

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