Let’s get this straight: no one like a slow loading website, no one. If your site does load slowly, you need to rethink your strategy as a webmaster because it’s likely that users are frustrated by your site. The important thing to understand here is that users don’t have the patience that they did years ago, and because of that, there’s a premium on website speed nowadays. Gone are the days of the 90’s when everyone had a dial up internet connection, and everyone’s site was slow. Users now expect things to be fast, and with LTE data available on many cell phones, many people have broadband in the palms of their hands. With that said, it’s important to understand that in terms of user satisfaction, there isn’t a much higher priority than page load speed.
If you think that your website might be loading slowly, one of the best things that you can do is perform a baseline website speed test worldwide from various locations in order to get an idea of where you stand at the current moment. Many companies that do speed testing will give you a different breakdown of how your pages load, and show in detail some of the page elements that are causing your site to load slowly. When you have this information, you can go on to your site and make the necessary changes that will allow you to speed up your site and make users happy!
It’s easy to get focused on page design, images, features, and lots of other different site elements, but one thing to understand is that if your website isn’t loading fast enough, none of these other things will matter at all! That’s because you will lose the attention of your users, and most likely their trust as well because once it looks like your site doesn’t load fast enough, they may think that you are running a cheap or low quality site, and they lack of trust can even spread to you brand if you are in business and your website is seen as an extension of your brand. Having web hosting optimized for web performance is extremely important too, because the speed of your servers is essential to fast load times. So the most important thing to take away here is that in order to keep your users happy, before you worry about a bunch of other things on your site, you need to make sure that it loads quickly, otherwise you could be risking your reputation, and a lot more if users deem your site to be low quality or untrustworthy.