Depending on your market and customer demographics, roughly 40% of all web browsing can take place on mobile devices, once again making website performance a very serious concern for all businesses.

During the days of internet dial-up and paying by the byte, second, or minute, website performance was a very serious issue. Waiting for a website to load or to react to a mouse event was not only tedious but was also very costly. However, as computers and internet connections became more powerful, website performance became less of an issue. Loading times were drastically reduced and dial-up was no more.

Over the past four years, mobile and smartphone devices have begun to provide users with unique and convenient internet browsing experiences. These experiences, however, are often hindered by slow, wireless internet connections and inadequate data signals. The issue here is that mobile users expect the same, high-quality web browsing experience that they would receive on their desktops or laptops. Website performance has once again become crucial to your business’ online success.

Mobile Experience

Your website must be accessible at all times and from all devices. If your website’s browsing experience is not convenient, intuitive, and efficient on all platforms, your business is losing a significant amount of visitors and potential customers or clientele.

Responsive web design is necessary for increasing your website’s accessibility. A responsive website automatically scales to fit the resolution of the viewer’s device. This means that a fully responsive website will provide all visitors with an enhanced browsing experience on all desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile devices.

Optimization

When it comes to website performance, the mobile experience is only half the battle. A website must be fully optimized for all devices in order to increase its performance as much as possible. Most website optimization processes such as code minification and image optimization are used to increase a site’s speed and decrease its load times.

If a website takes more than a few seconds to load, visitors will quickly grow restless or frustrated and take their attention elsewhere. In addition, mobile web users that lack an internet connection do not want to waste their data plan waiting for your website to load. According to Google, “fast and optimized [web] pages lead to higher visitor engagement, retention, and conversions.” By increasing and optimizing your website’s performance, you are greatly increasing your business’ online success.