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Google Speed Scorecard and Impact Calculator to Check Web Page Speed; Some Tips to Up Speed

To cure the problem of slow loading web pages and corrective action by webmasters, Google has launched Speed Scorecard and Impact Calculator. They were introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

How Does Speed Scorecard Operate?

The mobile Speed Scorecard tracks the page speed of a site vis a vis similar sites. By referencing to the Chrome User Experience Report latency database, the web speeds of millions of sites across the world are tested.

Speed Scorecard runs on a simple operation. All you need to do is submitting a site’s URL and adding a few more URLs to compare the speed with other sites. The tool will generate a list by arranging the URLs in a certain order of corresponding speeds. Google insists a mobile speed of 5 seconds on 3G connections and 3 a time span of seconds on 4G connections.

Impact Calculator

Mere delay of just one second in page loading can lose 20 percent potential customers.  Google’s Impact Calculator measures the potential revenue that could have been achieved with better speed. It calculates the data by analyzing a few values such as monthly visitors, average order value, and conversion rate. The slider that pops up will show the details of revenue hike if the speed was up by a few seconds.

Google, according to its spokesperson, is using the tools to address the problems of slow mobile sites by providing better digital experiences to consumers.

Google’s blog laments that 53 percent of site visits are lost and potential business goes waste because of a site’s inability to load within the desired three to four seconds. It notes that a slow mobile site is not only frustrating but also choking business opportunities.

According to Google stats, even a one-second delay in page loading will destroy 20 percent conversions.

The impact calculator will help site owners to know how much they gain in revenue by progressively reducing the load to a few seconds.

Google has upped the focus on page speed by making it as a critical variable in deciding ranking websites in mobile searches. Google’s ‘Speed Update’ has warned that slow web pages will be ranked low with effect from July 2018.

Benefits of Faster Sites

According to studies, delay in page load time has a negative impact on many fronts—it kills page views, decreases customer satisfaction and reduces conversions.

More than 47 percent consumers expect websites to load in two seconds or less. Nearly 40 percent visitors tend to ditch a page if the loading time exceeds more than 4 seconds.

It implies that if a site is taking more than three seconds to load half of the visitors will leave without bothering to arrive at the site. That is a big blow to conversions.

Walmart’s improvement in conversions

The case study of retail giant Walmart’s improving site speed for attaining more conversions and revenue must inspire business owners. After taking corrective steps on the site, Walmart’s analysis revealed that more visitors turned customers when they experienced faster page loading than visitors who found lag in page loading.

This shows faster page enthralls visitors and inspire them to make purchases.

After optimizing the speed, Walmart’s reported the following results

  1. For every single second of improvement, there was a 2 percent increase in conversions
  2. For every 100 milliseconds improved, incremental revenue jumped up to 1 percent

Google Survey on Page Speed

An analysis made by Google on 900,000 mobile ad landing pages from 126 countries reported showed that 70 percent of the pages took an average 7 seconds to show the visual content above the fold. And none of the sites were closer to the ideal time of page loading at three seconds.

The survey added that the average time for full loading of a landing page was a boring 22 seconds. It also said 53 percent of user visits are not culminating in a positive outcome because of the mobile sites’ longer loading time.

When loading time increases by one to 10 seconds, mobile user bouncing rate shoots up to 123 percent. This means site owners have to work hard in getting their sites in good shape.

Factors influencing Page speed

Loading time of a mobile page is impacted by many factors. A few steps to increase page speed and user experience will help the site owners and web masters.

Cut Down HTTP requests: When it comes to increasing efficiency of website pages, the motto must be leaner the pages better the performance. Make sure that only fewer elements are maintained on a page to enable faster response to HTTP requests of the browser.

Yahoo says 80 percent of the load time of web pages is spent on downloading page parts such as style sheets, scripts and images. When HTTP request goes out for each one of these elements the resulting overload of components will delay the loading time of web pages.

In order to cut down the number of requests, assess how many are really used by the site in making them a benchmark.

Check Google Chrome to visit the Developer Tools to find out how many HTTP requests are made by the site.

To analyze that, right-click a page and go to “Inspect,” then to “Network” by adjusting the Developer Tools sidebar to the left border.

You can see all files of the page on the “Name” column. In the “Size,” column each file will be displayed and the “Time” column will tell how long it takes to load each file. At the bottom left, the site’s total number of requests will be seen.

Importance of Reducing Requests

Now reduce this number of requests to accelerate the site’s speed. Scan all the files and make sure that the unwanted are out. That can be done by combining such files.

Size Reduction and Joining of Files

After the scale of requests are looked at work on reducing that heavy numbers. Start with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files which determine a site’s appearance. They play a big role in jacking up the number of requests at a site whenever a user visits it. Start miniaturizing and joining the files to reduce file size and the total number of files. Miniaturising will cut out unwanted formatting, whitespace, and code.

Keep Pages Lean

Too much of coding also makes pages heavy. Eliminate line breaks, extra spaces, and indentation to make the web pages lean. Any overplay of multiple CSS and JavaScript files can be addressed by joining them into single files. If a site is run on WordPress, use the WP Rocket plugin as the right tool for a simple process.

Go to the tab of “Static Files” identify the files for sized reduction and shortening. They can be JavaScript files, HTML, CSS, and Google Fonts.

After completing the processes, hit “Save Changes” and reload the page. Now go to Developer Tools and see for yourself the impact of the changes introduced.

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admin

Udit Khanna is a Digital Marketing Course professional at Expert Training Institute, an expert in Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media, etc. who helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, Udit worked as a marketing professional for various startups and tech companies. He graduated with B.Sc from IGNOU with a dual degree in Business Administration (Marketing & Finance).

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