Convert website visitors with faster WordPress page loads

We’ve all fell victim to the painfully slow and annoying websites that are abundant out there. Here’s a quick tip on how to not be an assailant.

It starts with WordPress

With Cartography Marketing I focus mainly on the small local business serving local customers in Tampa-St Pete area, so this is tailored specifically to us. By that I mean, if your site is not built with WordPress, call me. You’re seriously missing out on customers searching for you. I know there’s no shortage of agencies out there calling you, saying they can get you on Google Maps, improve your Local SEO, solve World hunger, etc – but if they’re not starting the conversation with what your website is built with – hang up the phone, shut the door, recycle the junk mail.

Grows with community

Seriously, your digital marketing efforts are worthless (or worse – a huge waste of money) without a fast, reliable website to funnel leads to. All the rest is extra. Mike Blumenthal explains all that with his Web Equity Infographic.

When a Local SEO agency (or any type of web marketing) reaches out to you and offers you a website as a part of their package, ask if it’s built with WordPress. If it’s their own cooked up solution, stay away. It’s most likely created to support their agenda, not yours. They may promise it’s “SEO ready”, which may be true today (or more likely 5 years ago), but will it be tomorrow?

WordPress is open source. It’s a community of users who build on each other, competing with each other, and ultimately improving the foundation, everyday. In the end, it stays current and up-to-date, and we all benefit – creators and end users.

Ends with conversions

Here’s an example:

I’m doing some research on website page load speeds and its effects on conversions. Your website likely exists solely as your digital billboard. You do SEO and other digital marketing to get people to see your website. Then when they get there, you want to accomplish a goal, like give you a call, request a quote, or sign up for a newsletter. However, if they get there from their phone or computer and the page loads so slow they feel like it’s 1995 again, they’ll quickly hit the back button (that’s called a “bounce”).

You just lost a potential sale and your competitor won them – who probably has an ugly website – but that doesn’t matter, because they just wanted a quick answer to their problem. (If you’re a visual person, here’s an infographic from kissmetrics.com)

So like I said, there I was looking for info on page speeds, and what do ya know? Instructions on how to quickly improve page load time with WordPress and a caching plugin – because the community as a whole supports your agenda, not just theirs.

Here’s some before and after screenshots how it helped me and can for you:

Mobile load time before W3 Total Cache plugin: