No you’re not imagining it. In the past three years, the time it takes for a page to load has actually slowed down significantly, yet online brands are spending more and more time, innovation and money on their brand’s SEO ranking and overall web presence.
Global Internet Speeds – Worldwide Performers
Countries such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore are Asia’s top performers in the international tables, ranking in the top ten download speeds repeatedly. In Europe, Scandinavian countries seem to have consistently high speed access for its citizens.
The current, up to date global average of internet speed is 5.6mb/s, however country to country the average accessibility to the rest of the world’s trade and e-commerce sites varies wildly., up to date, interactive sites can suffer in terms of their usability. The SEO variables measured by Google have for a number years included the site loading speed. E-commerce relies heavily on page loading times, both locally and internationally. The internet speed of a country by default location, web hosting provider and domain can make a huge difference to the conversion rate in countries that are used to a very quick internet connection.
The delivery of quick load page is essential to users, and hosts used on the other side of the world will need to ensure a content delivery network for local control. This exciting development of more widespread local hosting and domains can start to offer competition in a traditionally saturated ‘.com’ markets.
Country’s PAGE LOAD in seconds
2015 2016
U.S. Speed (average in seconds) 3.4 3.9
Australia Speed (av in seconds) 5.4 8.2
Global speed (av. in seconds) 4.2 4.5
Why The Slow Down?
Digital Performance Company, ‘Dynatrace’, have taken this research even further and discovered that commerce industry is so reliant on page loading speed for conversion rates that a global slow-down has indeed occurred over the past two years of trading.
Social Media/Third Party Advertising – Ironically, tools used to make a website experience ‘better’, with heavy advertising through third party links. A trading site should weigh up the potential slowing of conversion rates and in turn SEO ranking to any benefits of third party advertising. For larger international companies, this may not pose too much of an issue.
Site Interactivity While all brands hope to achieve a web presence with visual appeal, many interactive chat functions on sites are able to ‘turn-off’ a customer and also slow down the page loading speed significantly.
Go Local – Local Hosting is Reliable Solution and Can Speed your Site Loading
It comes as some surprise that users are, despite global technology and overall internet access improvement, experiencing these significant slowdowns in retail page load. The usability of pages in Australia are currently experiencing an almost three second increase in the time it takes to load a page, making the user experience largely frustrating. The overhaul of internet connection in Australia has had internet infrastructural issues upon its infancy. The National Broadband Network, is a huge replacement of copper lines with fibre-optic lines are now in their final stages, and set to be fully replaced by 2019. Looking at the research above, it seems possible that the countries that already struggle with download speed will are experiencing even more slowdown in the past two years.
Local Hosting and domains, such as ‘Umbrellar’, used in improving internet nations such as Australia and New Zealand can help offer new, slick and all inclusive packages that suit Small to Medium Businesses, and emerging business yet to offer a web presence. The leading local hosting provider to your country can improve a sites loading speed and in turn, their higher rate of conversion, improving SEO ranking.
The new competition is a healthy way to broaden hosting options for site owners, giving more freedom and peace of mind.The improvements in Australasia can offer some potential business expansion opportunities. With New Zealand now leading the way, local hosting and domains can speed up site loading by users in the same country. For a warmer brand identity, a country domain or ccTLD can be of reassurance and preference to a site user.