We are actively compiling independent research on the impact of site speed on revenue and conversions. Our goal is to build a dataset that is independent, credible, and accurate. To ensure this, we rely only on data from well-established companies, academic institutions, and official reports.
As a hosting company, we acknowledge the potential for bias in our findings, which is why we encourage scrutiny and criticism of our analysis. We will update this page regularly and welcome feedback to help maintain objectivity and accuracy.
Without exception, all our research to-date has shown that improving your website’s performance increases user engagement, reduces bounce rates, and drives more revenue. Our current blended average of all data collected equates to around a 7% change in revenue per second of loading time.
Whilst this blended average is an oversimplification, the data does universally suggest that improving load time does increase revenue by a statistically wide and often significant range and that this percentage would seem a fair representation of the data we have so far.
Below is our latest research, this list will be updated periodically as we aim to collect more data to create a better understanding of how website performance impacts revenue.
Year Published: 2017
Shown on the Think With Google site, a study originally cited as ‘SOASTA, The State of Online Retail Performance’ showed that for every second delay in mobile page load, conversions can fall by up to 20%.
Year Published: 2017
Akamai’s “Spring 2017 State of Online Retail Performance” report detailed the impact of latency on user behavior. They observed that even a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7%, illustrating how crucial speed is in competitive online retail environments.
Year Published: 2020 (approx.)
Deloitte’s “Milliseconds Make Millions” study examined how small improvements in page load time impact revenue across multiple industries. They found that for retail sites, a 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed can increase conversion rates by up to 8%, demonstrating that even tiny gains in performance can have a measurable effect on sales.
Year Published: 2019 (approx.)
Portent analyzed over 94 million page views across 10 ecommerce sites. They found that conversion rates were highest between 0–2 seconds, with a site loading in 1 second showing a 32% conversion rate, while a 3-second load time dropped conversions to 20%, highlighting how each additional second hurts performance.
Year Published: Unknown
Cloudflare’s performance insights note that site owners risk a 7% dip in conversion rates if page load is delayed by just one second. This underscores how an immediate and seamless user experience is critical to keeping visitors engaged and driving purchases.
Year Published: 2022 (approx.)
Rakuten, a major e-commerce platform, significantly reduced their Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) time—from roughly 10 seconds to 3 seconds. As a result, they saw improvements in user engagement metrics, including an 8.6% increase in conversions for first-time users, highlighting the clear correlation between site speed and user behavior.
Year Published: 2023 (approx.)
RedBus, an online bus ticketing service, focused on improving key performance metrics like INP (Interaction to Next Paint) and LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). The optimisations led to measurable gains: they saw up to a 5% increase in conversion rates and a 10% improvement in average session time.
Year Published: 2021 (approx.)
This Vodafone case study shows how optimising performance, including reducing loading times and enhancing the mobile experience, resulted in a 15% increase in conversions and boosted overall sales by 8%. The improvements demonstrate the powerful effect of performance on user actions.
Year Published: 2020
In eBay’s “Speed by a Thousand Cuts” engineering article, the team revealed that each 100-millisecond gain in the search page’s load time corresponded to a 0.5% increase in ‘Add to Cart’ count. By chipping away at page speed issues, eBay was able to drive more user engagement and potential sales.
Year Published: 2017
In benchmarking mobile page speed across 900,000 mobile sites in 126 countries, Google discovered that over half of visitors leave if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Their analysis reinforced that consumers expect swift access to information and are quick to bounce if sites are slow.
