Website Speed Is The First Impression You Make
Website speed is more important than ever. How long are you willing to wait for a website to load? According to statistics, just under half of us expect to wait no longer than two seconds for website content to pop up.
If your website loads fast, you've made a good first impression, and your potential patients are immediately happy.
First impressions are key to gaining new customers to your dental practice. Your website visitors will make an instant judgement about you and your practice. We consider fast websites to be professional and reliable. Whereas on the other hand we think of slow websites as unsafe and insecure and it’s very difficult to turn around that negative first impression.
A Fast Website Boosts Your Google Rankings and SEO
Google started using site speed as ranking system in 2010. Speed continues to be one of many factors that determine where your website will show in the search results.
Google knows that sending people to slow websites will cause an unfavourable user experience. Therefore it's unsurprising Google places value on site speed. Make sure that your dental practice has a fast website to ensure the top rankings in Google.
What Are Some Factors that Can Affect Your Website Speed?
The most important aspect of website load speed is the on page optimisation. You need to ensure the website runs correctly on both desktop and mobile.
Other things that can affect your load speed include:
- Where the website is hosted
- How large your images are on the site
- Using sliders and other considerations.
You should not strip down your site in order to achieve fast load speeds. Instead you need to ensure you're prioritising the features you need on the website while creating a good user experience.
Conclusion
Based on this, we have evidence that having a slow website will have negative effect on conversion rates, usability and SEO. If your website is running slow, we suggest troubleshooting to figure out why it’s running slow. There are a number of reasons why your site could be slow. Identifying them and finding a solution could be key for increased site traffic and therefore an increase in patients. If you're not sure how to do this or simply don't have time, we offer a hosting and maintenance service that can solve these issues leaving you more time to focus on your patients.
DME Hosting & Maintenance
