Most Irish websites take an average of 10.25 seconds to load fully on a mobile device, well in excess of the magic three second rule, new research released by Core indicates. The industry standard ‘three second rule’ says that websites accessed on mobile devices lose half their visitors if they are left waiting for more than three seconds.
Core monitored 100 Irish websites across automotive, banking, insurance, media, grocery retail and telecoms to see how long it took for the home page of each website to fully load on a mobile device. The best performing category were grocery retailers, with an average page load time of 7.4 seconds, while the slowest category was media at 24.4 seconds.
With searches performed on mobile devices increasing significantly year-on-year, a slow loading mobile website can seriously weaken return on investment (RoI) potential and reduce customer satisfaction. Searching on a mobile device is the new normal, with Google’s second quarter revenue up by 26 per cent on 2017, with mobile search fuelling growth.
If loading speed is slow, would-be visitors will move to another website with a shorter wait.
Aisling Blake (pictured), chief digital officer, Core, says that given the stats, one might assume most Irish brands and companies have their website speed sorted, which is simply not the case. Changes by Google may put even more pressure on brand owners. Once a brand is aware their website speed is not up to par, there are several ways to improve it.
- Invest in a mobile optimised website
- Consider implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open source initiative aimed at creating faster and better-performing websites across all devices
- Reduce the size of images on the site – it can help improve mobile site speed dramatically
- Eliminate unnecessary code on the site
- Engage with a recognised search engine optimisation specialist
For further details, check out www.onecore.ie
