The page load speed of your website can have a dramatic impact on your business.

Why? Because faster page load speeds result in higher conversion rates.Content delivery network (CDN) Akamai found that just a 100 millisecond (that’s 100 thousandths of a second) delay in web site load time can lower conversion rates by 7%, and that more than half of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.¹

^‍As page load times go up, conversion rates fall. mPulse Mobile found that pages that loaded in just 2.4 seconds had a conversion rate of 1.9%. When page load times hit 5.7 seconds, the conversion rate fell to just 0.6%.²

mPulse Mobile’s data also revealed that bounce rates climb in tandem with page load times.

The key takeaway: the faster your website, the better your business outcomes.

How Third-Party JavaScript Can Affect Page Load Speed

What’s third-party JavaScript, or JS? According to Google, “Third-party JavaScript often refers to scripts that can be embedded into any site directly from a third-party vendor. These scripts can include ads, analytics, widgets and other scripts that make the web more dynamic and interactive.”

Google explains that these scripts—which can include things like social media share buttons, video embeds and A/B testing tools—are often the cause of page load slowdowns and can be outside of the control of webmasters.At TurnTo, we understand that fast loading websites are the lifeblood of your business. That’s why we built our new SpeedFlex™ widget architecture from the ground up with a responsive, economical JavaScript framework.

As a result, our JavaScript bundles are a fraction the size of those from our competitors and can be booted by the browser 2 – 3 times faster.

Smaller JS bundles load faster over networks; that effect can be especially pronounced on slower connections and some mobile networks.

Smaller JS bundles are also an indication of good design practices, less bloat, and modularity. TurnTo, for example, only delivers the necessary code to support a particular site’s chosen product and feature set to lessen the load on the browser. We also defer the loading of some JS modules until they’re actually needed by the website.

How to Evaluate Your Third-Party JavaScript

Site performance measuring tools like PageSpeed Insights, Chrome DevTools and WebPageTest are commonly used to evaluate the relative impact of third-party JavaScript on websites. You can use these tools to identify all of the third-party JavaScript running on your site, and which third-party scripts take the most time to execute.

SEO Benefits of Faster Page Loads

Faster page loads can also give your website other benefits in the form of improved search engine optimization (SEO). With its recent “Speed Update,” Google now privileges fast loading pages in its search results, especially on mobile.In other words, the faster your website, the more positively Google’s search engine algorithm will look on your site.

Since product reviews, Q&A, and customer-generated photos are some of the heaviest components on ecommerce sites, the speed improvements provided by SpeedFlex can make a significant difference to overall site performance.

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‍¹ Akamai Online Retail Performance Report: Milliseconds Are Critical; Akamai, April 2017

‍² How Page Load Time Affects Conversion Rates: 12 Case Studies; HubSpot

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