How long are website visitors willing to wait for a web page to load? Just a few seconds, as it turns out. Google reports that the probability of a visitor bouncing (leaving your web page) increases 32% as a page’s load time increases from one second to three seconds.
Website load times can fundamentally alter your website’s user experience, customer engagement, and conversion rate. Learn about site speed statistics, the factors that affect page load time, and why these things matter to your business.
What is website load time?
Web page load time is the average amount of time it takes for all the elements on your web page—like the fonts, images, and videos—to load for a visitor. Your overall website load time is generally an average of your site’s page load times (how long it takes each page to load).
To better understand page load time, let’s break down what happens when a site loads a page:
1. The process begins with user requests, meaning a user clicks a link or enters a URL.
2. The browser establishes a secure connection with the target domain name.
3. On the receiving end, the web server takes the request, packages the requested content, and sends it back to the browser.
4. The browser parses the incoming HTML code and renders the page in the browser window.
Page load time is how long it takes for all of the above to happen—from the moment of the request to the presentation of the rendered page. Website visitors expect page load times to be fast. According to one study, 40% of shoppers will abandon a website if it takes longer than three seconds to fully load. If the website makes them wait a few extra seconds for the content, this delay reduces user satisfaction.
You can use website speed testing tools to generate site speed reports on your site’s average page load times. Some tools include Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom Website Speed Testing.
Benefits of a fast website load time
Minimizing website or web page load time can generate positive results, including:
Robust user engagement
Think of the difference it makes when you receive prompt service in a restaurant. When your web pages have a fast load speed time, your users don’t leave or become frustrated. This increases the likelihood of them engaging with your site content and even making return visits.
High conversion rates
Conversion occurs when a user performs a desired action on your website, such as making a purchase or subscribing to your newsletter. The conversion rate is the number of successful conversions divided by the potential number of conversions. The observable trend is that when load times increase, conversion rates go down. So if you want to achieve high conversion rates, improve your load time.
Increases in organic traffic
Search engines may consider your website’s loading speed when determining page rank. Historically, Google has ranked websites with low load speed times higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), although it’s become less clear today how the search engine prioritizes load speed against the quality of your site’s content. Regardless, improving your website load time can’t hurt your rankings and could increase the organic traffic that reaches your site.
Mobile-friendliness
Improving your website’s loading time can help optimize your site for mobile visitors, since smartphones generally have less processing power than desktop computers. In addition to satisfying your users’ expectations for fast loading times, fast mobile page load speeds will satisfy search engines like Google that rank mobile-friendly websites higher.
10 factors impacting website load time
- Network connection
- Server response time
- Large file sizes
- Number of HTTP requests
- Code efficiency
- Browser caching
- Content delivery networks
- Plug-in and script bloat
- Mobile page load time
- User devices
A number of factors influence your website’s page load time:
1. Network connection
The speed and reliability of the internet connection correlate to how fast data can move through the pipeline from web server to web browser.
2. Server response time
On the server side, limited hardware specs and out-of-date or buggy software can slow down the processing of incoming HTTP requests, resulting in slow loading times. An HTTP request is a request from a browser to a website’s server for data.
3. Large file sizes
Web content like videos, audio files, and high-resolution images take longer than text to download on end-user devices—especially on mobile browsers. Optimize images by saving them in a compressed JPG, PNG, or Google’s WebP format, which reduces the size while maintaining the quality. Compress your other media formats as well to improve the speed of your slow-loading pages.
4. Number of HTTP requests
Websites containing many complex elements—such as stylesheets, high-resolution images, and database content—might receive many HTTP requests all at once for these resources. This causes data bottlenecks, slowing down the load speed. To avoid this, simplify your website and use streamlined HTML code.
5. Code efficiency
Regardless of the type of code (HTML, cascading style sheet (CSS), or JavaScript) your site uses, avoid bugs or too much bloat (unnecessary lines of code), as these things take the web browser longer to parse and render the web pages.
6. Browser caching
Upon the first visit to a web page, the user’s browser loads all page elements and stores them locally in an area called a browser cache so the site loads faster on subsequent visits. If your website doesn’t have browser caching enabled, it could slow down the user’s experience.
7 . Content delivery networks
Websites on web hosting services that use a content delivery network (CDN) distribute their content across many servers around the world. The server that is geographically closest to the requesting browser will be the one to respond, meaning the data won’t have as far to travel, requiring less time. For example, an ecommerce site with worldwide reach would want to ensure its web host offers this.
8. Plug-in and script bloat
When using website builders, developers sometimes rely on sophisticated scripting languages or third-party plug-ins and apps that add extra functionality to the basic web page. If you’re in this situation, consider whether or not your site truly needs these tools, as the more back-end processing involved for your site, the slower its performance is likely to be.
9. Mobile page load time
Mobile browsing accounts for nearly 70% of all web traffic. If your website isn’t optimized for these devices, your site could be loading slowly and you could be losing potential customers.
10. User devices
The type of device a visitor uses to access your website is also a factor. While you can’t control what device the user has, you can optimize your website performance for a variety of devices to cover as many scenarios as possible. Also, make sure you have in place a fast, high-bandwidth web hosting service with reliable uptime.
6 website load time statistics
These load speed statistics stress the importance of improving your website load time:
1. Fast sites are up to three times more likely to convert than slow ones
A study of 100 million page views across 20 business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) websites over a month found that when a website’s load time is one second, it has a conversion rate 2.5 to three times higher than a slow page that loads in five seconds.
2. The average bounce rate for fast-loading pages of less than three seconds is 8%
At four seconds, the bounce rate jumps to 24%, according to one study. At five seconds, the bounce rate is 38%.
3. When web page speed doesn’t meet expectations, almost half of users are less likely to buy
Site speed directly influences a customer’s willingness to complete a purchase on the website. A survey of 750 consumers and 395 marketers found that when web page speed was slower than a visitor expected, 45% of surveyed users were less likely to buy and 37% were less likely to return to the site.
4. When mobile pages take longer than three seconds to load, more than half of visitors bounce
Despite the average mobile web page requiring 15 seconds to load, Google has found that 53% of visitors to mobile sites leave when mobile pages take longer than three seconds to load.
5. A fast mobile website can double your advertising revenue
A study found mobile websites that loaded within five seconds earned double the mobile advertising revenue compared to sites that loaded in 19 seconds (the average page load time for a mobile website over a 3G connection).
6. Sites that appear on the first page of Google load in about one and a half seconds
The average page speed of a site that appears on the first page of a Google SERP is 1.65 seconds, suggesting Google may indeed rank sites with fast load speed times higher.
Website load time statistics FAQ
How quickly should your website load?
Roughly speaking, optimize for a website load time of less than three seconds on desktop and under five seconds on mobile browsers.
What is considered a slow website?
Slow page speeds are relative to the device type and users’ perceptions. However, most desktop users find a website feels sluggish if the page speeds are greater than three seconds. On mobile, a website will feel slow to a user if it requires longer than five seconds.
What is the average page load time?
Average page load time is the average number of seconds it takes for a web page to fully load in a web browser. Several factors impact this figure: the user’s device type, the page’s content (file sizes, amount of code running), the physical distance between the browser and the server, and the network connectivity (bandwidth and signal strength).
