Is Your Website Costing You Customers?

A website is often one of the first places a potential customer encounters your business. It can influence whether they stay, explore, get in touch or simply leave.

Every second matters

Website performance isn't simply a technical concern. The time a page takes to load and become usable can affect the experience people have with your business.

Research from Deloitte found that relatively small improvements in mobile site speed were associated with measurable changes in business metrics across a number of sectors.

That doesn't mean that improving a website by a fixed amount will produce a guaranteed increase in conversions. The businesses, sectors and circumstances studied all differed. What it does demonstrate is that performance can be a business consideration, not just a developer metric.

A fast website isn't just about speed

Performance is only one part of the experience. A website can load quickly and still make it difficult for someone to find what they need.

Navigation, readability, accessibility, mobile layouts, forms, content structure and technical issues can all affect how someone interacts with a website.

The website can look fine to you

This is one of the easiest problems to overlook.

If you work with your website regularly, you already know where everything is. You know which buttons to press and which pages to visit. Your customers don't have that familiarity.

They may also be using a completely different device, browser, screen size or connection from the one you use to check the site.

What could your website be costing you?

A website doesn't necessarily need a complete redesign to improve. Sometimes the most valuable changes are relatively small technical or usability improvements.

• Slow or inefficient pages
• Problems on mobile devices
• Accessibility barriers
• Technical SEO issues
• Confusing navigation or user journeys
• Broken links or outdated content
• Technical debt and outdated dependencies

The difficult part is knowing which problems actually matter and where to start.

When did you last properly check your website?

Websites can gradually develop problems without anyone noticing. Content changes, dependencies become outdated, browsers evolve and customer expectations change.

A website that worked well a few years ago isn't necessarily providing the same experience today.

Your website is part of your business

Your website isn't separate from the rest of your business. It can be part of how people discover you, decide whether to trust you and ultimately contact you.

That makes it worth looking beyond whether the site simply "works".

The more useful question is whether it is working well for the people you're trying to reach.