How Website Speed Impacts Your Conversion Rate (With Real Data)
We analysed 50 client websites to understand the relationship between page load speed and conversion rates. The results might surprise you.
James Gleeson
Founder & Managing Director at Everblue Digital with over a decade of experience in digital marketing.
We've all heard that website speed matters. But how much does it actually impact conversions? We decided to find out by analysing real data from 50 client websites.
The results confirmed what we suspected—but the magnitude of the impact was even larger than we expected.
The Data
We analysed 50 client websites across various industries, comparing their page load speeds (measured by Largest Contentful Paint) against conversion rates over a 6-month period.
Key Findings
Finding 1: Sites loading in under 2 seconds had an average conversion rate of 4.2%, compared to 2.1% for sites loading in 4+ seconds.
Finding 2: Every 1-second improvement in load time correlated with an 8-12% increase in conversion rate.
Finding 3: Mobile users were 2.5x more likely to abandon slow sites than desktop users.
What This Means for Your Business
If your website is slow, you're leaving money on the table. A site that takes 4 seconds to load could be losing half of its potential conversions compared to a well-optimised competitor.
How to Improve Your Speed
- Optimise and compress images
- Use a CDN for static assets
- Minimise JavaScript and CSS
- Implement proper caching
- Choose quality hosting
Need help optimising your website? Learn about our optimisation services or book a strategy call.
