How Fast Should Your Website Load in 2024?

We all know that a fast website is essential for a good visitor experience.

In fact, it is estimated that 40% of your visitors will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Not only does a slow website severely affects your lead generation campaigns, the short time spent on your webpage effectively tells Google bots that visitors are not interested in the webpage content, leading to poor ranking on search engines.

So, everyone wants a fast website.

However, how fast do you really want your website to load?

3 Factors to Decide How Fast Your Website Should Load

1. Speed vs Functionality
2. Reasonable Loading Time
3. Real User Experience

1. Speed vs Functionality

If you have a blank white website with only plain text, it will load almost instantaneously.

However, at the same time, it would have little aesthetic value that motivates visitors to finish reading what you have to offer on your website.

A great website design should have a good balance between speed and functionality.

For instance, animations adds to the overall loading time of the website.

However, if you have a beautifully designed website with timely animations, it encourages visitors to spend longer time on your website which is the main purpose what you are trying to achieve. These applies to background images, videos and website capabilities as well.

In short, you don’t need to have a website that load almost instantaneously.

However, you still need to make sure your webpage loads completely within reasonable waiting time.

2. What is a reasonable loading time in 2022?

A reasonable website loading time in 2022 is about 2 seconds.

However, this doesn’t mean your entire website have to be completely loaded by then.

A website loads in sections.

In other words, you only need to make sure the first segment of your website has to be completely loaded within two seconds. The rest of the website will continue loading while the visitor scrolls your website.

3. The Real User Experience

Instead of focusing on Google PageSpeed Insights or other page load tools, why not focus on the real experience of the visitor?

Page load tools are perfect for developers so they can optimise the loading time of your websites.

However, if you just wish to find out the loading time of your website, the best measuring tool would be the eye test, just like every visitor on your website.

What do you think? Share with us in the comment section below.