We all like fast sites, especially in 2018. But how can we determine if a website is snappy enough? Are there any response time standards that we can refer to? Do search engines prefer fast-loading sites as well? This article will answer those questions.

Site speed has always been important. Nowadays, it is much more than that. It is a search engine ranking factor, a major contributing factor to page abandonment and a deal (conversion) breaker. We have already discussed how website speed affects SEO in a previous article "Website Speed and SEO", so you can review it out for more information on the topic.

Here are some statistics for Full-Page monitoring targets monitored using our service for the past month:

Monitoring location: London, UK
Average page load time: 3.96 seconds
Average page size: 2.3MB;

Monitoring location: Houston, TX
Average page load time: 2.20 seconds
Average page size: 0.5MB;

Monitoring location: Mumbai, India
verage page load time: 5.88 seconds
Average page size: 1.02MB;

Monitoring location: Auckland, New Zealand
Average page load time: 2.15 seconds
Average page size: 1.56MB;

As you can see the location you are accessing the website plays a significant role in the response time, but the average is around 3.5 seconds. “The lower, the better” rule applies here as well, of course, but if your site is able to fully load under 2 seconds, that is a great result. Here is what Maile Ohye (former Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google) says in Google’s Site Performance for Webmasters video back in 2010:

“2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half second.”

Yes, search engines prefer fast loading sites. The faster your website is, the higher search engine rank your site will get. But what can you do to speed it up?

Get a good hosting plan

Depending on your needs you will find hundreds of web hosting offers, but not all of them are going to suit your needs properly. Pick a reliable, fast and reputable hosting solution that is capable of handling even the heaviest traffic to your website. Consider implementing a CDN solution for even better results.

Optimize your website

Huge pictures, heavy Flash animations or a lot of images will slow down your website, that is for sure. Make sure that you optimize all the photos to a suitable web size, get rid of the legacy Flash animations and clean up your code. Your efforts will be awarded.

Use a response time monitoring tool

It is really important that you constantly monitor your website for speed an availability. Our wide variety of monitoring tools and services will be of great help so you can be informed and aware of the state of your website at all times. Being the first one to get a notification for a slow-responding or not working website gives you the advantage to fix the issue in a timely manner, thus reducing the possible downtime and respectively not losing money.

Also, if you want to see how the leading gift e-commerce websites performed on Valentine’s Day, check out our 11th annual Valentine's Day Retail Performance report.