How does your organization measure the return on investment (ROI) of its digital marketing efforts? Conversion rates and bottom-line sales are good indicators of success, but they do not tell the entire story. Here is the problem: conversion rates and bottom-line sales tell you nothing about consumers who land on your site but then quickly leave.

To gain some insight into that group, you need a new metric. That metric is page speed. The reality of the modern internet is that slow speeds chase away consumers. If your site takes too long to load, most people will not wait around for it. You have lost them as customers before even being given a chance to show them what you have to offer.

How We Got Here

Way back when the public internet first became a thing, aesthetics was the most important factor. Organizations insisted on websites that were beautiful enough to command attention. A decade later, aesthetics was replaced by content. But in the 2020s, things shifted again. While aesthetics and content are still important, modern websites need to be fast.

A general rule in our industry is that a page must load in under 3 seconds. It is better if you can manage 2 seconds or fewer. Anything over 3 seconds is risky, and a page that takes 5 seconds to load is a digital dumpster fire. People expect the web to be fast. They demonstrate that expectation with their surfing and viewing habits.

3 Reasons Page Speed Should Be an ROI Metric

Page speed can and should be an ROI metric for your digital marketing team. At its core, page speed affects how many consumers will hang around a website. If people are not spending time on your site, they aren’t being exposed to your message.

The experts at Pixsan, a San Diego, CA website design company, offer these three critical reasons for making page speed an ROI metric:

1. The On-Demand Economy

Jokingly known as the ‘impatience economy’ in our industry, the on-demand economy has conditioned consumers to demand instant gratification. So even a slight delay in your site’s load time could be costing you dearly.

Data suggests that a 1-second delay could mean a 7% reduction in conversions simply because visitors don’t stick around. That translates into $7,000 losses for every $100,000 in revenue. It is almost like a tax for having a slow-loading website.

2. Core Web Vitals Data

Google’s Core Web Vitals feed their search engine algorithms with vital site data, including load times. As a result, slow loading pages are negatively impacted in search engine rankings. Core Web Vitals pays attention to three key points:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

If the results are not what Google is looking for, your website will suffer from an SEO standpoint. That means less traffic and fewer conversions.

3. Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

Finally, most organizations fail to acknowledge that page speed affects paid media ROI nearly as much as SEO. So if you are spending a healthy part of your budget on Google or Meta ads pointing users to slow-loading pages, you are spending money on unproductive clicks.

The reality of the modern web is that slow landing pages cause bounce rates to skyrocket. High bounce rates negatively impact page quality, overall quality score, traffic, and a number of other factors that directly contribute to both the user experience and conversion rates.

Pay attention to page speed. If your site’s pages take longer than 3 seconds to load, you’re losing money.