Introduction

If you were to ask many digital marketing agency how SEO has changed in recent years, and what area’s a business should improve if they are to improve the company’s SEO, well they are bound to say one word, and that is “speed”.

And why would they say speed?

Well, that’s with good reason, whether it be Google’s Accelerated Mobile pages, or AMP for short, or be it how fast the mobile version of your website loads, speed is now very important.

Which may well be the precise reason why your reading this article, that’s to say you may well have heard about “lazy-loading”– and wondered whether you should add lazy loading to your WordPress website?

Well, to give you a bit more of an idea about what lazy loading is, and how it may help your business, we thought we would write this rather helpful article for you.

Page speed

Did you know that if your website takes over 3 seconds to load, that 40% of people will then abandon that website?

Well, you do now.

So this is why the speed of your WordPress website is super important, as most people simply do not have the time to wait if a company’s website takes too long to load.

So this is why web developers, and website designers should work really hard to ensure that they build a brilliant website, but its simply not enough now to just focus on design, instead you must think of what many SEO’s call the “user experience”- meaning how can you make your website easier to use.

For example, does the main menu work easily?

Does the shopping cart allow you to purchase items easily?

Does your website load quickly on smartphones?

Here’s another really interesting fact, a mere 1 second delay in a pages response can reduce the conversion rate by 7%.

So its really important that you get your website running fast, and one way to do that is to use lazy loading. But, before we go any further its worth mentioning this, that is, if your thinking about adding lazy loading to your website, do get a website developer to do this for you, as if its not done properly and if GoogleBot cannot crawl and index the website, then your seo could be impacted.

For example, sometimes if lazy loading is not installed correctly, a glitch may develop where not all of the page loads, which means that only the top paragraph may load for each page, which means that GoogleBot may only crawl and index that page, with just the one paragraph of text, which means that the page may well be deemed “content thin” which simply means your seo could be impacted, so do consult with an expert.

So, what does “lazy loading” actually mean?

Lazy loading is simply when elements of a page aren’t loaded until they are needed. So in other words, let’s say you have a website that sells shoes, and you sell many different types of shoes, yet not all of the page will load.

So this means say only 10 pairs of shoes will load, then the other say 50 pairs of shoes, well they will not start loading until the user scrolls down to reveal them.

And what’s the main benefit of this?

Well, it can speed up the website, that is so the reader is not left staring at a blank page that’s taking too long to load.

Faster websites

So this does mean that your website could be faster, which means that your websites bounce rate could possibly decrease.

And what does bounce rate mean?

Well, your web developer and your SEO agency should be working to reduce your businesses bounce rate.

The businesses bounce rate is simply the percentage of visitors to your website that have left whilst only visiting one page.

So for example, lets say you sell candles, yet the home page doesn’t actually sell any candles, yet you find that 90% of all organic visitors to your website come through the homepage, yet the homepage has a 80% bounce rate, meaning that for some reason all those visitors are not going to a page that sells your candles, so it’s the web design agencies job to try and reduce this.

For example, your web design company may offer A/B testing, sometimes called split testing, that’s to try and see if they were to make a change, then see if this helps to increase sales?

More responsive

With lazy loading your website could become more responsive, and what do we mean by that?

Well, lets say you are looking to purchase new pair of running trainers, and this website sells over 1000 pairs of running trainers, instead of a shopper having to use a website that’s slow to load all of the products, as soon as the shopper scrolls down the page, instantly the next set of running trainers are there, making the website more responsive.

May not work correctly

Here’s a super important thing to remember, make sure that if your business does implement lazy loading that its done right. Hire a web developer that has experience of implementing lazy loading for other businesses, as if glitches do occur, then this could impact your businesses seo.

How our business can help:

If your business requires a new website, then why not ring us?

What does lazy loading mean?

Our web design agency explains what lazy loading means, and how it can be used to improve your businesses seo