Google launches new mobile site testing tool that shows dealers how long it takes for their site to load, how much traffic they are losing, and compares their site to their competitors.

I’ve been talking about how slow sites and landing pages are costing dealers a lot of money for a while now, but computing an actual dollar cost has been difficult.  

Until now.

And a lot of dealers and website providers are going to be pissed.

Google’s new mobile site speed testing tool tells dealers how many visitors their current website is losing because of its speed and compares its performance to competitors.

So, how much does a slow site really cost dealers? A lot! I tested a number of different sites from some very large and respected dealers. Their sites took 6 seconds to load and Google estimates that 24% of their visitors clicked away because of it.

Think about that for a moment, 1 out of every 4 visitors to your site is bailing just because your site is slow! Can you afford to waste 25% of your digital advertising? Can you afford to have 1 out of every 4 potential buyers go to your competitor’s site because your website vendor’s code and technology are stuck in the Dark Ages?

If a dealer is spending $20,000 a month on digital PPC advertising with Google, and 24 percent of the clicks that they paid for never see their site because it takes too long to load, they wasted $5,000 in ad spend.

And that doesn’t take into account lost revenue from the customers they could have had if their site just loaded faster!

According to Google, if your competitor has a site that loads just one second faster, they gain a 5% advantage in performance over your site. If both of your sites get 20,000 visitors a month, your competitor is going to get 1,000 more visits just because their site is faster!

So far, 2 seconds is the fastest I’ve been able to find. I’ve tested so many now that Google’s captcha is giving me the evil eye. If anybody has a site that loads faster than that I’d love to see the results.

For smaller dealers without the budgets of the big boys, here’s a perfect opportunity to steal business just by being smarter and nimbler. Update your site now if it’s slow. You’re already paying for a website, it might as well be fast. If your current website provider can’t meet these standards, change and find one who can!

I know, a lot website vendors in the automotive industry are going to say this test is flawed, that they’re sites are really fast, check our Time To First Byte (TTFB), blah, blah, blah. Bull Pucky. Don’t be fooled by the mumbo jumbo. Time To First Byte is a measure of how long a webserver takes to send the first byte, not how long it takes for your site to load. Big difference.

In fact, if any dealers would like some help deciphering the techno speak or think their website vendor is trying to BS them, I invite them to call me directly at 949.910.0421 and I’ll be happy to debunk their BS and explain what’s really going on.