At Ring Ring Marketing, we talk a lot about home improvement content marketing and online advertising. But if you’re not backing up those efforts with a site that works well for users, you’re wasting your money.

That’s why we’re taking October to provide a four-part blog series on basic website management. Don’t worry—we’re not going to get into the nitty gritty of web dev or talk about server maintenance. But we are going to give you some actionable tips you can use to improve page performance when it comes to home improvement marketing.

Why Is Page Speed Important?
The first topic in our series is page speed, in part because it’s so important. Don’t think it matters how fast your pages load? Consider these numbers:

• Average page load speed of 2.4 seconds = average conversion rate of 1.9 percent
• Average page load speed of 3.3 seconds = average conversion rate of 1.5 percent
• Average page load speed of 4.2 seconds or more = average conversion rate below 1 percent
• An increase in page load speed from 2.4 seconds to 3.3 seconds can almost double your page’s bounce rate

What does that mean for your bottom line? Imagine you sell new window installation services and your average revenue per sale is $5,000. You also get 1,000 visitors to your page per month.

With a conversion rate of 1.9 percent, that’s 19 sales and $95,000 in revenue. A conversion rate of 1.5 percent leads to 15 sales and $75,000 in revenue. Less than a second of page load speed loss could cost you more than 20 percent in revenue!

How Do You Check Page Speed?
Use Google’s Page Speed Insights tool or free options such as GTMetrix to find out how fast your pages are loading.

GTMetrix scores your page on specifics, such as server response, bad requests, whether images are properly scaled, landing page redirects, and various coding within your style sheets. This can help you pinpoint what might be slowing your pages down.

Tips for Increasing Page Speed
If you do have a page speed problem, it might require a technical solution. You can start with basics, such as ensuring you’re not using any super large image files and that your server and hosting services don’t have issues. Next, reach out to your developer for help optimizing code and applying other technical tricks to speed up your pages.