How Your Website Loses 7% of Potential Conversions. Download speed matters. A one-second delay could result in 7 percent fewer conversions, 11 percent fewer page views, or even a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction. Over the last 15 years, I’ve told that to clients and it’s been confirmed by third-party research. So if speed affects business results, then why would you add a second to a page’s load time?
The Google +1 button and the Facebook Like button add over one second of load time to your page, according to a recent research study by TagMan, a tag management and acceleration company. Of course, visitors clicking on +1s will impact rankings. That’s why you’ll want to add the code to your website.
To complicate things further, Google for years has been telling anyone who will listen that website speed is as an important factor in determining rankings. “One of the 10 things we hold to be true here at Google is that fast is better than slow. We keep speed in mind in all things that we do, and the +1 button is no exception,” according to a post published this week on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.
Read more at Clickz