Retail surgery: Making page load speeds a priority

Search marketing agency Greenlight has researched the page load speeds of retailers and found that there is a big difference between the best and the worst. But apart from being annoying for customers who notice a second or more difference, does it actually impact on a retailer’s top and bottom lines?

Almost certainly, says Greenlight chief operating officer Andreas Pouros, who points out that slow page load times make it more expensive for retailers who want to advertise using Google paid search.

If a retailer has a slow-loading site Google will mark the Quality Score down - the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads. This means the retailer must pay more to Google for any paid search position than they would if its site loaded quicker.

Pouros adds that Google could also add a page load time measure to the formula it uses to rank results in natural search at any point and this - as it rarely comments on such changes - is another reason why retailers must not assume page load times are no longer an issue.

He thinks that the proliferation of broadband means web designers have got a little sloppy with website code. He says: “In almost all cases they are front end problems not back end problems. We are seeing a lot of instances where people are building sites with coding that is inefficient.

“Navigation needs to be a key focus, as does image optimisation, and they need to clean up their CSS code [cascading style sheet].”