For those who own car dealerships, your mobile website is on the clock. If you have reached out to an internet marketing agency at some point, then you probably already know that your mobile site needs to be fully optimized for speed. Of course, your regular site needs to be optimized as well, but mobile usage has overtaken desktop usage, and you need to be dedicating time and resources accordingly. But is page speed really as important as all that?
Why Page Speed Matters
You might be asking “But surely a few extra seconds of loading time won’t matter that much, will they?” Well, yes, actually, they will. If your site is one of several for new or used cars in the area, then an impatient mobile user will go swiftly on to the next one if yours doesn’t load immediately. Page speed impacts how long visitors stay on your site. It makes a difference in how they see the professionalism of your dealership or lack thereof. It affects where you rank for organic search, and how much you pay for PPC advertising. There are many things that need doing if you’re running a dealership, and optimizing your mobile site for speed might not be getting prioritized. It should. If you’re not able to do it yourself, an internet marketing agency is the answer.
If you do decide to undertake the process yourself, here are some areas on which you can concentrate. You should never choose cheap sharing hosting of the sort that fits as many websites as they can into one server. If you do this, your site will be available, but it will load much more slowly. Invest in a web host that ensures faster loading speeds, and has the analytics to back it up. You should also make some effort to reduce HTTP calls. Every file needed for a webpage to function and render calls for a separate HTTP request, and the more requests there are, the slower the page will be in loading. There are several ways to get around this, however. You can merge your CSS files into one font. You can combine your JavaScript files into one, and you can eliminate or reduce files that load their own CSS and JavaScript files. All of these will cut down on loading speeds.
As you go about this, remember that even the smallest fraction of time that you can cut from your loading speed, less than a second, will matter. As a car dealership, it’s critical that you put your best foot forward as it relates to your potential customers. That means making a good impression not when they walk onto the lot, but when they first encounter your business in the realm of cyberspace.
