Website Load Speed Test – Find Out How I Lost Over $50,000 For Not Checking The Speed Of My Site
If your pages are taking more than 3-4 seconds to load, most visitors will simply click away to check out the next search engine listed site, and what many people don’t know is that search engines will most of the times drop these slow-loading websites entirely from their index.
Now, I know this because I had to find this out through personal experience. I own the website Personal Development Business which is ranked on first page of Google and it has been generating over 3,000 unique visitors in the last 30 days. Here’s a snapshot of that.
website load speed test
For some reason, the visitors weren’t converting as much as I thought they would and I didn’t understand why. I originally thought that TRAFFIC = SALES. After several weeks searching through the forums, I found a post from somebody else who recommended to find out how fast my website was loading. Honestly, it never occurred to me to find that out. I was so focused on creating website after website and “optimizing” it for SEO ranking, but not thinking about if the site had too much content for it to load.
Website Load Speed Test Free Software
It turns out, I just discovered today that my site was taking over 8 seconds to load. Check out the snapshot below.
Website Load Speed Test
When I found this out, my stomach literally turned. I felt like my heart was in my throat because I realized that I’ve been leaving money on the table for neglecting to see a very important element for a website to be able to attract visitors. You might not understand what I mean by leaving money on the table. So let me tell you what 3,000 unique visitors to my site translates to income in my business.
The below numbers aren’t guaranteed and are only based on previous experience from other Empower Network business owners.
On the internet, the average website converts at around 2% of visitors into sales. That means that if I have 3,000 visitors to my site each month, that would translate to approximately 60 sales of my product or service. In my business, the minimum sale is $25.00 and you can make as much as $3,000 in one sale.
For every 10 people that join Empower Network
10 x $25.00 = $250.00 (monthly residual)
4 x $100.00 = $400.00 (monthly residual)
2 x $500.00 = $1,000.00 (one time sale)
1 x $1,000.00 = $1,000.00 (one time sale)
1 x $3,000.00 = $3,000.00 (one time sale)
For a total of $5,650.00 in sales. This is what an average Empower Network business has generated in the past with only 10 new signups. Or an average of $565.00 per signup.
So, If I’m bringing in 3,000 unique visitors to my Personal Development Business website, and being conservative that I would only convert 1% of those visitors to customers, that would translate to 30 new signups or customers per month. That means that I should be generating 30 x $565.00 = $16,950.00 a month for that one website alone.
So now you see why I felt like my heart went up to my throat! This has been going on now for roughly 2 months. If that is the case, then I’ve left as much as $50,000 (or over $30,000 if I want to be conservative) on the table for simply neglecting my websites and not making sure that they were loading properly.
So I started testing several website load speed test software and plugins out there. The problem with a plugin is that it has to run on your server and it can potentially slow down your site.
So I decided to stay away from plugins and look for software or websites that were not tied to mine and that could give me an accurate reading of how my site loads from different parts of the world. The one I found that I really liked is Pingdom. They do have an upgraded paid version, but all you need is to use the free one.
So after using this website load speed test software, I immediately started tweaking my site and removing all the extra pictures and media that I had. I tried to keep my page under 1,000 words. Here are the results after running the website load speed test again.
Website Load Speed Test
The site is now loading in under 3 seconds. Notice that the page size is now almost 30% smaller. Of course, this is my initial tweaking and my intention is to get that score from 77 to above 90. The software will also tell you what errors it has and what you need to fix to get that score above 90. So I will work on that and keep you posted in a few weeks on my results and how that traffic is converting with a faster load speed.
So don’t forget to bookmark Pingdom. It can save you time and money… And potentially a heart attack. ;o)
Until my next post.
P.S. To learn how my Personal Development Business and this blog is generating an income for my family, watch this video now.
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