CODEWITHSUNDEEP
performancewebcachingpagespeed
Herodney Emile
Herodney Emile

Reputation: 9

Whats important initial page load speed or the cache load speed?

So I am trying to decrease the page load speed of a website and wanted to know if I should worry about my initial load time or just the second cache load time. I noticed while testing that my website loads faster the second time than the first. I know initial load time is important. Im just wondering if I got my page to at most 3 seconds to load first time and 1.30 second the second time is that satisfactory?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 991

Answers (1)

GrahamTheDev
GrahamTheDev

Reputation: 24825

What is a good load time for a website

3 seconds is satisfactory - assuming that is on a slow 4G connection on a mobile phone.

If it is over WiFi / wired connection on a PC then you are probably a long way off a load time that won't affect your conversion rates, bounce rates and Search Engine Rankings.

Initial load time is far more important (as cached time will improve anyway if you improve the initial load time.)

To give you an idea (these are numbers on a mobile phone under 4G so bear that in mind):-

  • 1 second load time = 4% bounce rate
  • 2 second load time = 7% bounce rate
  • 3 second load time = 10% bounce rate
  • 4 second load time = 25% bounce rate
  • 5 second load time = 40% bounce rate.

As you can see at 3 seconds you are just about on the limit of people's patience and people will drop off rapidly if your site takes even 0.5 seconds longer to load than it does now.

You want a load time on desktop to be under 1 second for maximum results and under 2 seconds on a mobile on 4G.

Use Page Speed Insights or GT Metrix to see how to improve

Use Google page speed insights to see what is causing your site to be slow and learn how to fix the issues. It will also give you a rough idea of load times on mobile vs desktop.

What score is good enough

A score of 90 or above is fine and should be your goal.

Only people who like pain go for 99 or 100 and it is not advised for 99% of websites due to cost / time required vs return on investment.

As you can see (link to klu.io if you don't like clicking external links) I am one of those people...my site loads in 0.4 seconds on a desktop and 1.6 seconds over 4G.

The effort I had to put in to achieve this is not worth it, I do it as a 'show piece' to demonstrate techniques.

The time taken to get from 90 to 100 was about twice that required to get to 90 in the first place.

Quick Wins

If your site is WordPress the easiest way to speed it up is to learn how to use W3 Total Cache to cache your site and minify everything. (don't just install and run, learn how to adjust the settings as it can make a massive difference.)

Then use a tool to optimise your images as that is nearly always the biggest problem for site speed. I have no recommendation here as every tool I know has restrictions that can become annoying for the free versions.

Upvotes: 1

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