Most people have all experienced it at one point — trying to pay a bill online, but not knowing if the payment processed because the confirmation page won’t load.
Waiting to read a breaking news article with overwhelming anticipation because you’re waiting for the loading progress bar to finish.
Whatever the case, it’s not uncommon for anyone to eagerly wait for a mobile page to load only to bounce out of frustration. Google data backs this up as 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if the page takes more than three seconds to load:
It’s critical that marketers design fast mobile web experiences because while slow page load speeds cause friction and abandonment, faster mobile experiences can result in more engaged visitors, higher conversion rates, and higher revenue.
To help digital marketers get a better understanding of their page speed, Google launched a new, convenient way to evaluate your mobile page speed: mobile speed score.
What is the Google mobile speed score?
Mobile speed score ranks mobile post-click landing pages on a 10-point scale, 1 being the slowest and 10 being the fastest. This allows you to quickly see which of your pages are providing fast mobile experiences and which ones require attention (and A/B test).
However, the result of your Google mobile page speed test is based on more than just loading time alone. It’s also determined by the relationship between mobile page speed and potential conversion rate.
The page speed score is now part of Google Ads and can be found directly on the “post-click landing pages” page:
[February 2019 update] Google updated their mobile speed score algorithm, which now requires fewer ad clicks to calculate a score. This means you’ll now see a speed score for more of your pages.
2 tools to supplement mobile speed score
Google offers two additional tools to evaluate mobile page speed: the Speed Scorecard and the Impact Calculator.
Speed Scorecard
The Speed Scorecard analyzes the speeds of thousands of sites across 12 different countries, enabling you to compare your mobile page speed against other companies’ page speeds.
Simply enter your URL and compare it to others. The tool will arrange the URLs and their corresponding speeds in list form:
The search giant recommends an initial load speed of 5 seconds or less on slower 3G connections (and subsequent loads in under 2 seconds), and 3 seconds or less on faster 4G connections.
Impact Calculator
In addition to deterring visitors, slow mobile pages can cripple your business’ revenue. According to Google, even a one-second delay in mobile page speed can lower conversions by up to 20%. That’s why the Impact Calculator was created, to show the potential revenue lost due to a slow-loading mobile site.
Start by completing the fields at the top of the Impact Calculator. Including domain, current speed, average monthly visitors, average order value, and conversion rate. The calculator will display your speed along with a slider. By dragging the slider left, you can see how much your revenue could increase by speeding up your page’s load time:
So what if your Google mobile speed test results in a low score? How can you increase your page speed load times to generate higher conversion rates and more revenue?
Accelerated Mobile Pages
Google recommends Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) because this framework provides a faster, smoother, and more engaging mobile experience. From the beginning, AMP was intentionally designed for speed and the results prove it out as AMP pages typically load 85% faster than standard mobile pages. In fact, the average AMP post-click landing page load time from Google search is less than half a second — nearly instant.
Since it’s more streamlined to help avoid common coding issues that lead to slow page loads. Browsers have an easier time interpreting AMP HTML, making them faster to load. AMP pages also appear directly from Google AMP Cache. Google will serve the cached copy of a post-click landing page, which offers the fastest load time.
Speed matters
Google’s mobile speed score, Speed Scorecard, and Impact Calculator all work together to help marketers achieve fast-loading mobile pages. Optimizing your pages will benefit you and your prospects will be more engaged instead of frustrated with slow page loads. Once you have the necessary data from these tools, get started creating AMP post-click landing pages with Instapage.
Instapage is the most robust post-click landing page platform with the capability to build personalized, mobile-optimized post-click landing pages using the AMP framework. To see the feature in action, request an AMP demo today.
