o you feel the need for speed? If not, you should—at least where your website is concerned. It’s always been important for your dealership website to load quickly and efficiently—but it’s just become more pressing than ever. In this post, we’ll explain why, and also show you how you can repair a slow or laggy website.

Why Website Speed Matters

The main reason why your website speed matters is customer experience. You probably know first-hand how frustrating it is when you’re trying to load a website, but it’s moving at a painstakingly slow speed. Well, if it’s frustrating for you, it’s bound to be annoying for your customers and potential leads, too. In fact, studies show that if your website takes more than three seconds to load, most users will simply abandon it altogether.

But there’s another reason why website speed matters—and that’s SEO. Google has always said that performance is a key ranking factor. Now, they’ve rolled out their Speed Update, which really proves their commitment to quick-loading sites.

The Speed Update is Here

But what is the Speed Update, exactly? It’s a new algorithmic addition to mobile searches, wherein sites that load too slowly will actually be penalized—meaning they may not show up in search queries!

How slow is too slow, exactly? Google hasn’t offered any specific metrics, but you can probably fall back on that three-second standard we offered above. If your site takes much longer than that to load, there’s a chance you could be seeing some drop-off in your Google rankings.

Checking Your Speed

If you’re worried about your site speed, now’s a good time to check it. You can just do this informally, loading your site on various browsers and devices to see how long it takes. Or, for a more scientific approach, just do a search for “speed tests” and find some of the resources available. Google even has its own speed test you can run.

And what happens if your site doesn’t load quickly enough? There are a number of potential issues, some of which may be obvious—like an overabundance of big, complex files, such as video and images. It could also be an issue with your server speed or even your server location.

If you can’t find an obvious fix, it may be worthwhile to address things with either your Web developer or your host.