What makes a good website? Many people think it’s mainly about the visuals. They focus on the design and an attractive interface.
However, some of the most important aspects are often overlooked: SEO optimization, conversion optimization, and user experience. For all three, website speed—that is, page speed—is a critical factor. Here at LeadEngine, we focused specifically on this factor as part of our “Website Speed Study 2022.”
2022 Website Speed Study: Background
According to Forbes, optimizing Core Web Vitals is one of the major trends in search engine optimization for 2022. The reason for this is that Core Web Vitals are now officially among Google’s most important ranking factors. So if you want to appear as high as possible in Google’s search results, you need to optimize these metrics.
What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals is a metric developed by Google. It measures the user experience on a given website. It focuses on three factors, which we also took into account in our website speed study:
Charging speed
To do this, we measure how long it takes for the largest content on the website to load completely. The value should be less than 2.5 seconds.
Responsiveness and Interactivity
This measures the time it takes for a website to respond to a visitor’s click. The ideal value is less than 100 ms.
Visual Stability
This is about stability during the loading process. The value should be less than 0.1. If the value is within this range, it prevents the user from accidentally clicking on a different button because the desired button has shifted while loading.
Why are Core Web Vitals important?
If a website achieves good metrics, Google will rank it higher in its search results. When you consider that 70% of searchers click on the top 3 results, it becomes clear just how important optimization is in this context.
2022 Website Speed Study: Research Questions and Results
We wanted to find out how well the websites of Upper Austrian mechanical engineering companies perform in terms of loading speed.
That is why we analyzed the CWVs of nearly 100 websites as part of our “2022 Website Speed Study” for Upper Austria.
The results are sobering, with the mobile website performing significantly worse in terms of speed than the desktop version.
Desktop Speed
The website’s speed on the desktop view is mediocre. More than 60% of companies need to take action:
- 6.2% are rated as “poor”
- 56.7% rated it as “in need of improvement”
- 37.1% are considered “good”
Mobile Speed
Mobile page load times almost universally have room for improvement. According to our Website Speed Study, 90% of the Upper Austrian machine manufacturers analyzed perform poorly:
- 46.5% are rated as “poor”
- 46.5% rated as “in need of improvement”
- 7% are considered merely “good”
However, it is precisely in the mobile sector that the greatest need for action arises when websites load slowly. This is because smartphones and tablets are the preferred devices for browsing the Internet these days. According to Statista, usage via mobile devices exceeds 54%.
What are the benefits of optimizing website speed?
In short, it boosts sales.
The reason for this is simple:
We live in an age of immediacy. People expect everything on the Internet to work quickly. If a page loads slowly, it frustrates the visitor. If they’re frustrated, they’ll leave the site, and Google will record high bounce rates. If a website loads quickly, users aren’t frustrated and the bounce rate is low, so Google rates it as higher quality.
There’s another factor to consider here: Relevant content encourages users to stay on the page and interact with it. This improves rankings, and the website appears higher in Google’s search results. The higher it ranks, the more often it’s clicked. As mentioned, the top 3 organic positions receive 70% of the clicks. With the increased number of visitors, sales—and thus revenue—rise, assuming the conversion rate remains constant.
How can website speed be improved by optimizing Core Web Vitals?
Here are a few simple tips to get you started on how we can improve these metrics:
When it comes to page load speed, for example, unnecessary third-party scripts should be removed. Another option is to upgrade your web host to improve loading speed. Using “lazy loading” is also an option. With this method, images are only loaded when the user scrolls down the page.
To improve responsiveness and interactivity, third-party scripts that are not strictly necessary should be removed. In addition, a browser cache can be used to reduce response time and prevent the page from loading slowly.
To optimize visual stability, size attributes must be specified for images, videos, and so on. This way, the viewer’s browser knows how much space is needed for each element on the page.
Would you like to know how your site is performing in terms of Core Web Vitals and website speed? Or do you already know that there’s room for improvement but aren’t sure where to start? If so, contact us for a free initial analysis or a consultation.
