If people regularly click through to your site, then click out again, you earn yourself a high “bounce rate” in Google’s eyes – and that means they could label yours as a site people don’t find interesting or relevant, leading them to let you slip down the listings. What’s worse, this could seriously impact on your position in Google. And your customers are not going to wait. It’s not even that you’ve written too much copy! I can tell you one thing I know, above all else when it comes to web design, it can look as elegant, complex or fancy as you please – if the code behind the site is messy and badly put-together, that page will not load quickly. It’s not because you have too many products on one page, or you’ve added that embedded feed from your social media channels. The problem is nothing to do with that fabulous design you have had created. It’s not about simplifying your design either – the secret is all in the code. Get that wrong, for any reason, and they’re gone. A sharp-loading site that’s mobile-ready is what you want to aim for but remember this is all about your customer’s experience on your website.

Now, it’s a lifetime – especially if you’re aiming at the mobile market which (let’s face it) we all are.

Yet I remember when I started out, it was considered marketing gospel that you had a mere eight seconds to grab your potential customers’ attention – count that out load to yourself and tell me if you’d still be waiting for that website to load? No, because back then eight seconds was pretty quick. I’ve been running my business over twenty years and we’ve created thousands of websites that have served millions of people all over the world.

In 2017, a study by Google ( ) of almost one million websites revealed that over 50% of visitors will leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load! What you may not realise is how badly that slow loading website is affecting not just your customer experience, but can be really damaging to your brand. Now imagine what it’s like for your customers – or rather, DON’T! Because by the time you’ve realised how off-putting a slow loading site can be, they’ve already left. Is waiting for your website to load like waiting for paint to dry? Not super exciting for you, but you’re used to it and some days it’s not too bad…

One mobile market crack