Site Speed. Who cares?

[Alex Snyder]

In a world of car dealer websites, where customers are on a very specific mission, I wonder if site speed matters as much as people make it out to

Take the 17+ worthless plugins off the site and aren't all dealer website providers providing enough speed to get the job done in both Google and the customers' eyes?

 

[craigh]

My major issue with this area is that almost every "speed test" is not measuring speed (I'm looking at you, Google).
They measure all sorts of other optimization things. We did an exercise to get a site to 100%, just to see what it would take.

Ends up we couldn't get to 100% because some of the scripts we load from Google don't have caching enabled, so they warned us about their own scripts

The two tools that I love are:
https://tools.pingdom.com - this is a raw speed test that shows you how fast or slow you are loading and shows the reason why, based on actual loading times of every image and script. Very useful for finding easily overlooked issues.

https://www.dareboost.com/en/compare - when the client says "yeah but Google page speed says blah blah" I use this tool to show that they're still loading faster than their competitors, despite what Google is recommending they do. Does brilliant visual side-by-side speed comparisons with a visual timeline to show first pixel, etc.

As for the main point: I live on my cell phone and I never blame slowness on the website, I am always blaming my WiFi or reception - I can't think of a single time where a website itself was slow enough that I recognized it being an issue. I know consumers are impatient, but I don't think 1 second difference on first page load matters. The trick is to make sure caching ensures that every subsequent action is much faster.

 

[Alexander Lau]

The reality is, most search for a dealership's name / brand. The speed of a website has nothing to do with that find. That said, site speed matters in terms of usability. Abandonment rates highly increase (has been heavily studied) when a site or application fails to live up to speed standards. See @craigh great links above.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Abandonment rates highly increase (has been heavily studied) when a site or application fails to live up to speed standards.

Of course. But let's assume that all of the dealership website providers are providing a more than adequate site speed. Is it really a big deal when selecting a website vendor? Is the chase for first byte load speeds REALLY that important?

 

[craigh]

Of course. But let's assume that all of the dealership website providers are providing a more than adequate site speed. Is it really a big deal when selecting a website vendor? Is the chase for first byte load speeds REALLY that important?

I don't think it is, but I also don't think dealers are focusing on it.
The priorities I see them chasing:

1. Video homepage (slow)
2. Larger, higher quality images (slow)
3. More shit on their homepage (slow)

After they ask for all that, they complain that it takes 3.5 seconds to load their homepage.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I don't think it is, but I also don't think dealers are focusing on it.
The priorities I see them chasing:

1. Video homepage (slow)
2. Larger, higher quality images (slow)
3. More shit on their homepage (slow)

After they ask for all that, they complain that it takes 3.5 seconds to load their homepage.

Those can all be preloaded or killed. Usefulness can be argued.

 

[Itsallaboutthemoney]

If you analyze what PageSpeed Insights tool (PSIT) does, you will understand that it evaluates a website in accordance with general criteria for the average websites. The scores are subjective and don’t mirror the true experience a user has while loading your website. PSIT results are not a rating of the actual speed of your website, but rather a rating based on a set of rules that Google believes are most relevant to page speed and performance.

Besides, some background events and processes that are slow have nothing to do with the actual user experience. But PSIT evaluates these processes as well.

And of course, caching. If you visit a website for the first time, your browser loads it slower than during the subsequent visit because site logo, scripts and stylesheets, etc have been cached previously.

They don't consider this key factor while calculating the speed

So you don't have to waste your time trying to achieve 100/100. It will not mean that the job is done and your website is perfetto

 

[JamieS]

Measuring page speed is important, but probably more so to make sure the load time is not exceptionally slow. Also, measure the subpages (SRP, VDP, and other key pages), not just the homepage. The home page should be greatly minimized to only include the basic steps to get your visitors to where they want to go. This can be done with some basic heatmapping. Watch what your visitors are clicking the most, then simplify those pathways. My very much faith-based belief is that people will abandon if the pages are seemingly not loading, but if the UI/experience is good, they'll wait or come back as in Craig's example, leaving when the perception is signal quality is low.

I do believe large images are important though. One thing I hate about CarGurus' app is that images are tiny. Sure you can pinch zoom, but this seriously messes with the UI/NAV, making it difficult to scroll through images. You just have to put on your "car shopper" hat and go shopping. We forget we're consumers too, and our own feedback can be valuable.