How fast should your Wordpress page load to retain visitors

I am sure we can all agree that Wordpress is a great blogging platform. But the user experience can dramatically change if you have to wait for a web page to load.

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Reading up on statistics, it is clear that when a web page takes longer to load you lose your audience.53% of visitors will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to loadAs technology develops, the attention span of internet users decrease. People expect your web page load time to be faster now than ever before.

Average load time of a web page is 3.21 secondsThe analytics website "Pingdom" collated data from millions of speed tests users carried out and noticed that the average load time of a web page is 3.21 seconds.

Generally, you should aim for 2-3 seconds to be on the safe side, as Google now considers page speed a ranking factor. Take time to work on the page speed of your website to shave off some seconds.

52% of online shoppers confessed that a quick page load is important to their site loyaltySwift page load time enhances the loyalty of your customers. People obviously prefer to do business with fast websites than slow ones.

quick page load time important to site loyalty

52% of online shoppers confessed that a quick page load is important to their site loyalty

47% of visitors expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or lessAlmost half of your visitors actually expect your website to load below two seconds.

Earlier this year Google released research in which they concluded:

The average time it takes to fully load the average mobile landing page is 22 seconds. However, research also indicates 53% of people will leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

How can that be? The key above is the word ‘fully.’ Most mobile pages have tons of extra scripts, tracking code, and ads that continue to load after you think the page has loaded. If you think that doesn’t affect you because you’re still using the site, consider the power it’s pulling from your battery and cell data usage.

The following stats are consolidated from that Google report, which focuses on mobile landing page experiences.

What is the average load time?For this we’re going to consider the average perceived load time, more specifically the ‘speed index’, which measures how long until most of what you can see within your browser screen is loaded.

Industry United States United Kingdom Germany JapanAutomotive 9.5 sec 12.3 sec 11.0 sec 10.3 secBusiness & Industrial Markets 8.7 sec 8.3 sec 8.2 sec 8.1 secClassifieds & Local 7.9 sec 8.3 sec 7.0 sec 8.3 secFinance 8.3 sec 8.0 sec 8.6 sec 7.6 secMedia & Entertainment 9 sec 8.8 sec 7.6 sec 8.4 secRetail 9.8 sec 10.3 sec 10.3 sec 8.3 secTechnology 11.3 sec 10.6 sec 8.8 sec 10secTravel 10.1 sec 10.9 sec 7.1 sec 8.2 sec

Pick your industry in addition to location and find your industry standard loading time to see if you should improve your website speed.

While the average of the values in the table is 8.66 sec, the recommendation for 2018 is to be under 3 seconds.

What is the average web page size?There’s no denying that direct correlation between site speed and site weight. Here we can see the typical download of the entire page (including images, scripts, and external files) measured in megabytes.

Industry United State United Kingdom Germany JapanAutomotive 2.1 MB 2.6 MB 2.6 MB 2.5 MBBusiness & Industrial Markets 1.6 MB 1.8 MB 1.5 MB 1.8 MBClassifieds & Local 1.6 MB 1.6 MB 1.2 MB 2.1 MBFinance 1.3 MB 1.3 MB 1.3 MB 1.7 MBMedia & Entertainment 1.9 MB 1.7 MB 1.4 MB 2.5 MBRetail 2.1 MB 2.2 MB 2 MB 2.6 MBTechnology 2.3 MB 1.9 MB 1.7 MB 2.7 MBTravel 2 MB 1.8 MB 1 MB 1.8 MB

While the average of the values in the table is 1.88 MB, the recommendation for 2018 is to be under 500 KB.

How to compare with your site load time/size/resources?Now that you know the ideal page load time, you can compare your website loading time.

There is a bunch of tools to test your website speed, try any of the following:

WebPageTest: The industry standard for measuring site performance – results are collected from real browsers running common operating systems.Pingdom: a simple tool which makes makes the same measurements, yet method of testing is undocumented.GTmetrix: gives you actionable insights about the best way to optimize your webpage speed.Any of these tools will give you the numbers you’re looking for, once. Go ahead and enter your url to see your custom values.

Bill writes is a student at UCLA, studying towards Media and arts. Bill is an avid listener of birds and enjoys watching planes go by.