Mobile Site Speed Benchmarks, How Does Your Page Stack Up?

Mobile Site Speed Benchmarks

Wondering if your mobile site is too slow for users? Wonder no more! We took a look at the numbers and want to share them with you!

When it comes to mobile site speed, seconds matter to consumers

When it comes to the Internet, we want everything as fast as possible. Mere seconds seem to last lifetimes when we are waiting for pages to load or advertisements to end.

This is no different when it comes to mobile site speeds.

Google recently released a report on over 900,000 mobile websites. Not surprising, they found that the longer a page takes to load, the higher the probability that the users will leave the page.

This probability doubles when a page takes more than 6 seconds!

Even though the average mobile page takes over 22 seconds to fully load, Google found that 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Google also found that even though more than half of overall web traffic comes from mobile devices, mobile conversion rates are much lower than desktops.

Which categories have slowest page loads?

Surprisingly, technology is the biggest loser when it comes to slowest page loads. Technology mobile pages take an average of 11.3 seconds to fully load content.

Travel follows technology closely, with an average of 10.1 seconds to fully load. Retail follows closely with 9.8 seconds to fully load.

However, the category with the fastest mobile loading pages is classified and local, with a 7.9 second load time. Still, this is pretty far from the best practice of 3 seconds.

Why are we so slow?

There a few factors as to why mobile page loads are so slow. The biggest reason is that most mobile pages are not optimized.

What does optimized mean and why is it important? Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that visitors who access your site from mobile devices have an experience optimized for the device.

This means less is more. Less text and fewer images should be used on mobile to make sure pages take less time to load.

Always remember that context is key. What do you want to see when you use your mobile device? It’s a smaller screen than your desktop so you don’t want to see something that is too busy. Most likely you want to see content that is easy to read and scroll through.

 DBI Tip: One way to make your mobile pages lighter is to compress your images and text. You can see how your current site scores on mobile friendliness and mobile site speed at Test My Site

 

Why should we care about mobile site speeds?

Consumers are using their mobile devices more and more to shop online. But consumers will leave a mobile site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. This is a big problem for retail, especially as most retail mobile sites take 9.8 seconds to load.

Further, those consumers who do end up purchasing through their mobile devices but who were dissatisfied with the site performance are less likely to make another purchase from the same site again.

 DBI Tip: Complex pages hurt conversion rates. Figure out what information/elements are most important and get rid of the rest on mobile. 

SEE ALSO: 5 SEO Mistakes That Cost You Money

What are your strategies for your mobile sites and mobile site speed? Please share! 

Written by
Gina Wanless

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