Case Study
ecommerce beauty brand finds a 3 second decrease in page load speed increased customer order counts by 24.8%
Direct correlation between page load speed and revenue
In the world of eCommerce, page load speed can be the difference between an order and an abandoned cart. That’s no secret. But to be able to measure exactly how much one can affect the other was truly eye opening for this client.
Every department within the business was being tasked with doing more with less, including the digital marketing team. That meant somehow they needed to increase sales and revenues without having additional budgets to spend on things like paid media. They had a theory that improving page performance on the website might help, but the ownership wasn’t willing allocate funds to the project. If they wanted to hit their numbers, they had to get creative and find a way to prove that decreasing page load speed would result in an increase in revenues.
Because Click360 can actually see exactly how much each second of page load speed effects revenue, the client set out to prove that an investment of $10,000+ in page load speed reduction would pay for itself and increase monthly recurring revenues.
“I was shocked at the amount of detail that was captured at the customer level.”
– VP of Digital Marketing
41.1%
Increased Monthly Revenue Generation
24.8%
Increase in total monthly orders
3X
Increase in purchase conversions
Page Load Speeds in Performance Marketing
It’s not uncommon for companies to look at page load speeds as they relate to customer satisfaction and marketing performance overall. Most companies know that decreasing page load speeds is going to result in a more positive customer experience on the website. What can be difficult is how to quantify exactly how much one affects the other in terms of ROI and revenue generation. For example, many search engines will penalize companies for slow page load speeds by de ranking them in relevant searches. But to be able to see exactly how that relates to lost revenues is nearly impossible to quantify.
It’s one thing to make general assumptions on the average gains that could be realized when improving customer experience on eCommerce websites. It’s entirely another to be able to measure exactly what that looks like with verifiable and realizable revenues attached to those same performance improvements. Those are the kinds of results that marketers can make massive business altering decisions based on, and with Click360, they often do.
The Challenge
Without having the backing of ownership and without funds to test theories, the digital marketing team had to get creative. Everyone at the company knew that page load speeds affected the business one way or another, but without tangible proof of outcomes, there was no room in the budget for error. Week after week the team lobbied for an increase in their budget to make the necessary changes citing things like low conversions and high bounce rates as their metric of proof.
Time and time again the leadership team acknowledged the problem but continually pointed to the fact that all departments were under the microscope. They either needed to see tangible proof or the team would have to make the necessary improvements out of their existing marketing budgets. More than likely, the proof AND the improvements were going to come out of their budget either way.
The Solution
The marketing team had already implemented Click360 to improve paid media performance. Because of that, they also already knew that page load speed was a component of that overall performance metric. Now they just had to put their hypothesis into action to see how page load speeds were actually affecting revenue generation.
Over the course of a 3 month study, the team was able to see exactly how page load speeds were affecting both new and existing clients, as well as performance by channel. It became increasingly obvious that moving forward with the page load speed improvement project was a no brainer, as the results would justify not only the project, but actually blow their revenue targets out of the water as well.
The Result
This was definitely one of those, “Why didn’t we do this sooner” kind of moments. The team found that a 3 second decrease in page load speeds (which were hovering around 5 seconds on average) would increase customer count by 24.8%. As an added bonus, they also found that site visitors were 3x more likely to convert to revenue given the new boost in page speed performance.
At an average order value of $70.16, the additional orders plus the increase in customer conversions equated to a 41.1% increase in monthly revenues, and they were able to cover the cost of the website updates in a matter of just over a week.