5 Reasons Marketers Must Focus on Load Times in 2015

I market software that is incredibly powerful but at it's simplest it can tell you if:

1. Your website (or app) is loading or available
2. How quickly (or slowly) it's loading, and whether it's impacting users.
3. And if you have problems, why, where and when.

We normally market our software to IT, however I'm constantly amazed at the data we have access to, and feel very passionately that marketing needs to be embrace user experience. These are my top 5 reasons:   1) A faster website (app) generates more leads - 74% increase when you drop load time to 2 seconds! Dropping website load time from 8 secs to 2 secs increased conversions by 74%" - Dynatrace (formerly Gomez). Don't spend another cent on getting more leads until you monitor and improve the load time of your website. It may just smash your cost per lead targets. 2) A slow website is a massive brand problem Who is monitoring your social activity? Probably marketing. How important is social media to your brand? Probably significant. Social media can crush a brand in hours. Consider website optimisation as an insurance policy against negative social media sentiment. 3) Big marketing campaigns can crash your website (and your brand) Kia spent a fortune on a superbowl ad. We are talking millions. As soon as the advertisement broke, so did the website. See blog. No it's not cool when you have lots of people on your site and your website crashes. It's not a badge of honour. Optimise it prior to a big campaign. 4) People are increasingly using mobile phones Surprise. A mobile related reason. Mobile grew 81% in 2013. Now consider that71% of people expect a website to load faster on a mobile than on a desktop. Go back to what I said before about the brand problem, but then factor in the loss of revenue if you're a retailer. 5) Load time is typically determined by big images, 3rd parties, and interactive plugins added to the site. I can safely bet it's probably not IT that is asking to put Facebook, Twitter feeds, live chat, social login, and user feedback on the website. Typically, the more that is added to the site, the slower the site. It's worth understanding what the impact of these 3rd parties is on your site. And if that 3rd party goes down, then your website will too. Last year Doubleclick was down for an hour. It impacted nearly 3000 of the top websites around the world. Oops. It's time my fellow marketer. It's all about time. I've embrassed web performance metrics, and I'd love to share more with you. Please get in touch if you'd like to learn more (webinar, breakfast meet, or just a chat) dave.anderson2@dynatrace.com For more info you might like; - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHZb7wto7RY - She'll be right mate blog post about Australian Retail Performance Or take a free performance test and see how your website stacks up!