Server Speed And Business Revenues: Exploring The Connection

The demand for information and services over the internet has become more acute in recent years. This has been only possible due to the continuous expansion of web applications. It’s a known fact that the users want to obtain most of their daily life information from web-based services, stored on servers. Servers receive clients’ requests, process them and then deliver them to the end-users. The effectiveness and efficiency of the web servers are determined by one criterion, how precise and fast response they can offer to their clients.

If the website is slow and takes a longer time to load, obviously that website is going to lose revenue and sales. In this web regulated world, a web-optimized webpage with lesser load time can expect improved user experience, higher conversion rates, and more sales revenues.

This article narrates how dedicated server with durability and great speed can be a determinant to increase business revenues.

Why Is Website Loading Time Important?

Web page load time or website load time is how long it takes for a webpage or website to fully load and appear on the screen. This includes all the content of the site like text, images, and videos. This speed or load time depends on various factors, like file sizes, page type, website server or host, and ad plugins or widgets. A survey done by Unbounce in 2019 revealed that almost 70% of web visitors admit that the website loading time impacts their willingness to be a buyer of ecommerce. This factor of loading time has been an important ranking factor for websites after Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing.

Have a look at this process that explains the role of the server in determining website load time:

The browser requests the server to the network after the user enters a URL.
The server processes the request.
The response is sent back to the browser by the server.
The browser makes the entire page available to the user after loading the page content.

Website Speed & Page Traffic

Website speed, web page traffic, and conversion are closely linked. It is a fact that if any website takes more than three seconds to load, it is likely to lose half of its visitors. The website loading speed affects the revenue; if the site loads even one second faster, it will lead to more than a 5% increase in conversions. Why? In reality, the ‘patience is a virtue’ rule doesn’t work in this case. No user or visitor likes to sit and watch loading a page; as a result, faster websites lead to happier visitors.

Impact Of Hosting Server On The Website Speed

The web hosting company and the chosen server to host the website can have a major impact on the speed at which the website loads for users. If the server is not equipped with enough resources, web pages will load slowly for every visitor. This speed also depends on the types of hosting services. Shared hosting is the most common choice for many small websites; however, it is not the best solution for all.

Comparatively larger websites with a higher number of visitors should choose VPS or virtual private servers. VPS provides better performance as compared to shared hosting cost-effectively. Websites having huge traffic should opt for a dedicated hosting plan as it can offer complete control of the server resources.

A Slower Server Means Less Revenue

No one prefers a slow-loading website. That makes the users frustrated and annoyed. Remember that everyone has a better and faster alternative. Slow page load leads to poor conversion rates and less revenue for the business. This is an unexpected situation for the business and its potential customers. Users abandon the slower loading websites; this fact becomes clear from technical SEO audits of those websites. There is a possibility of a significant amount of revenue getting lost entirely due to slow server speeds. Therefore, this situation needs immediate attention.

A Faster Server Means More Revenue

Faster server speed will load the websites faster and viewers will spend more time on the website. Not only the users, but fast-loading websites make a good impression on search engines like Google. Google uses crawlers to check or crawl the website. If Google finds the website is loading faster, it will rank that website higher in search engine result pages. The website will be easily found by visitors and consequently, they will generate more revenues being potential customers. It has been noticed that big brands have experienced a revenue increase by making their websites load faster.

The Connection Between Server Speed & Revenue

There are numerous websites on the web and many more are entering daily. To be ahead in this competition, every website needs to be hosted on high-speed servers with more bandwidth to load faster to avoid losing against better-performing websites. This server speed is directly correlated to the financial return from the website. Websites using servers delivering higher loading speeds can benefit from increased traffic, which can have a huge impact on the revenue.

The Ideal Page Load Time For Websites

The website should load as fast as possible. Although there is no standard parameter to term a website fast or slow, it is necessary to know how many seconds the website exactly takes to load. A general rule mentions the loading speed to be 3 seconds or lesser. If the website can load within 5 seconds, that still has a fair chance to be accepted by the users. The loading speed exceeding 10 seconds will lessen the chance of website acceptance.

Here’s how a website outperforms others in terms of loading speed:

Loads in 5 seconds: the website is faster than approximately 25% of the web.
Loads in 2.9 seconds: the website is faster than approximately 50% of the web.
Loads in 1.7 seconds: the website is faster than approximately 75% of the web.
Loads in 0.8 seconds: the website is faster than approximately 94% of the web.

Some performance metric tools are available to measure the website speed on the server; also those tools suggest ways to improve page loading speed. You can use tools like Sematext, Google PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest, and GTmetrix.

How To Improve Server Response Time?

Important tips to improve the server response time:

Reliable Web Hosting: The server chosen to host the websites should be capable to fulfill the website needs. The server should have higher bandwidth and its response time should also be consistent.
CDN: CDN or content delivery network is a distribution of proxy servers present at different locations to serve the users with content. More CDNs at multiple locations ensure higher server speed as hosting servers at distant locations can reduce website load time.
Database Optimization: Server response time also depends on database optimization as optimized databases serve the users more quickly.
Avoid Overloading The Website: Using simple or lightweight templates with minimum themes and plugins can reduce the webpage loading time.
Check PHP Usage: PHP scripts should not utilize important resources of the websites, as this can increase the loading time of the websites.

Dedicated Server For Faster Loading

Website speed depends on the speed of hosting servers. Though shared hosting offers the service at a cheaper price, dedicated servers have more power and resources to load the web pages faster. Dedicated hosting has lots of advantages like:

Faster page loads even for the websites using heavy themes and animations.
Higher security.
Capability to handle more traffic without downtime.
Higher uptime.

Conclusion

Businesses with an online presence have understood the importance of server speed and also its role to increase revenues. Various ways to increase server speed have been discussed in this article to guide the website owners. The most feasible option seems the dedicated server hosting as shared hosting can’t offer the optimum potential to increase server speed. Choosing the best for the server to increase website speed is a lucrative investment to face the competition, gain customer trust, and get higher revenues.