I've always been quite proud of my website. Until the weekend, when Google told me what it thinks of it.
Apparently my site is quite slow to load on mobile phones. The home page takes 10 seconds on a 3G connection, which is rated 'poor'. And Google reckons I'm losing 29% of visitors.
Why? Because of impatience. We all HATE slow sites, more so on our mobile phones.
You can get Google to scan your website here.
It will even produce a detailed report to help you speed it up.
(Talking to my web genius is my number one job for tomorrow... today my daughter's school has been shut because of snow, so we're out sledging. Yay!)
If you rely in any way on search traffic, the speed of your site will become a lot more important in early 2018
For some time Google has been moving towards something called a "mobile first index". It's now believed this will start in the next few months.
What does it mean? Well, the switch from desktop first to mobile first means that when Google indexes your website and decides what ranking position to give it, it will do it from a mobile perspective, and not a desktop one.
Google will also start using the speed of your mobile pages rather than your desktop pages to determine your overall rankings.
If you rely on natural traffic, this could have a big impact.
Even if you don't rely on natural traffic, it's worth looking at anyway. Google is doing this because people HATE slow sites, remember.
You don't want anyone EVER getting frustrated when trying to access your site. Frustration = lower response to marketing = less net profit.
In this case, what's good for Google is good for humans, and should ultimately be good for your business too.
Go on, get Google to scan your site and send you a report now.
