There is no doubt that content marketing should be used for increasing sales and driving revenue. The volume of traffic it brings can certainly give you a boost if your readers are interested in what it has to say.
Consistently providing content for your audience is often perceived as the biggest challenge in content marketing. However, there are even more basic elements that might contribute to the interest of your audience that may have an even larger influence over readers’ purchasing decisions.
What’s the most common element causing your readers to bounce? Your website’s speed.
In an infographic detailing how your website’s load times impact conversion rates, WebpageFX points out that a 1 second improvement in page speed can yield a 7% increase in conversions. Imagine that! You aren’t creating any more content. You aren’t buying advertisements. No, you are simply making your content faster!
In terms of ecommerce, a one second improvement can lead to millions of dollars a year in revenue.
You may have the room for more than just a one second improvement. As indicated in the last section, Intuit and Mozilla shaved several seconds off their load times. A 2.2 second improvement for Mozilla translated into an additional 60 million downloads per year!
The fact is that users generally expect pages to load in three seconds or less. Any additional time after three seconds creates dissatisfied online shoppers who are less likely to convert. Does your site load in under three seconds?
If it doesn’t, there are many different things you can do to improve you page speed. For starters, see what Google says about your site with their free PageSpeed Insights tool. It will give you several suggestions on how to improve your load time that exhaust the normal length of a blog post!
An increase in conversion rate is just the start. When you optimize the speed of your site, you can benefit from some other unforeseen areas that can also increase sales in the long run. Site speed is a ranking factor for Google’s search engine meaning significant improvements in site speed can boost your search engine rankings. Getting your content to the top of Google’s search results is one of the best ways to get more traffic to your site!
Not only is a traffic boost possible with shorter load times, but it is also reasonable to expect greater interaction from your users. Users who are not hindered by a long wait return lower bounce rates and more pages per visit!
Creating content that increases sales is important. However, you might need to take a look back at what you already have and see what improvements you can make. You may be surprised at how slow some of your pages load. Any quick page speed adjustments may prove worthwhile as your conversion rates and other key performance indicators go up and up!
