Metrics, SEO
In the digital world, having a slow website is the equivalent of not answering the phones; it erodes trust and can result in missing critical leads for your firm. Beyond that, it is also a critical ranking factor for Google and a key element in user experience (UX) on your site. If your current site is sluggish, it may be time to consider a complete refresh, starting with law firm website design built for speed. Given the importance of this single metric to your firm, we wanted to explain the essential elements of site speed, how to test it, and what you can do about it.
Why Site Speed Matters
Website speed has been an important ranking signal since 2010 for desktop and 2018 for mobile. Site speed can be viewed almost like a measure of the efficiency of your site. Faster sites are easier for Google to both crawl and index. If your site isn’t loading quickly, it will take more time for Google to crawl pages, and some of your pages may get skipped as a result.
The importance of site speed is also key when considering Google’s mobile-first indexing. Today, Google mainly uses the mobile version of your law firm’s website when considering rankings. On top of that, a large portion of potential clients will find your site on a mobile device, and often while using Wi-Fi or other potentially slower connections. Combining that with an already slow site can be disastrous for UX and greatly impact the likelihood of a user staying and converting on the site.
Site speed is critical for a user’s experience on the site. Statistically, the chance of a user leaving a site increases by 32% when a page’s load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds, according to WP Rocket. This action, a user leaving a site before going any further into it, is known as bounce rate, and it strongly correlates with site speed. In a similar study done by Google on mobile site speed, it was revealed that “53% of visits are likely to be abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.” This means half of your mobile visitors are at risk if you aren’t keeping your site speed down.
More directly, slow site speed can also be felt through decreases in conversions on your site. Slow pages mean fewer contact requests and fewer leads for your law firm. Especially as many people seeking out legal help are already in a stressful headspace, they really aren’t going to want to spend time having to wait for web pages to load. Faster sites do more than just keep visitors on them; they also convert them at a higher rate.
How To Test Your Site Speed
The best way to test your site speed is through a variety of Google tools: Lighthouse, Google Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights.
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI)
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is the primary speed testing tool, providing an instant performance rating and a variety of data and scores on the metrics that Google prioritizes. These scores range from font and image loading speed and accessibility to a variety of SEO and best practices metrics. The tool is the standard for assessing a page’s speed health.
When using this tool, you should make sure to go beyond just testing your home page. You want to make sure you are fully understanding the performance of any pages that users could land on. We recommend testing at least:
- The Homepage
- Key Service/Landing Pages
- Other High-Traffic Pages
This tool provides two different sections: Field Data (under “Discover what your real users are experiencing”) and Lab Data (under “Diagnose performance issues”). The field data will show you what your actual clients have experienced on the site over the past 28 days; however, it will only be pulled if you have enough traffic. The lab data is from a lab test that simulates a slower network connection (often a throttled 3G connection) and a mid-range mobile device. This is beneficial as it mimics the experience of a large segment of users who aren’t on high-speed internet, directly showing you what your site looks like under pressure. It also includes a large breakdown of a variety of different metrics to help you diagnose specific issues that might be contributing to site speed in order to help optimize. Using a combination of the two gives you a great overarching view of the health of the page you are testing.
Lighthouse (Chrome Web Browser’s DevTools)
Lighthouse is a tool available directly within the Chrome web browser’s developer tools. You can access this by inspecting a page, which you can pull up when you’re on a web page through right-clicking and selecting “Inspect” or through a keyboard shortcut (Windows: “Ctrl + Shift + I”, Mac: “Command + Option + I). This opens DevTools, where you can then select “Lighthouse” from the options along the top. You then just need to select your desired options and run the analysis. This tool is helpful if you are just looking to get a quick audit of performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices without leaving the page. The main caveat here is that it is only showing how the page performs for you, given your location, device, and connection. In order to get a more overarching idea of your site speed, it is best to also go into PSI to test pages as well.
Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC provides an overview of your entire website’s health, including a dedicated report for user experience. This report can be found under the “Experience” section in the menu on the left-hand side, and is labeled “Core Web Vitals.” This shows you what pages on your site are passing, failing, or need improvement in terms of Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) assessment. It is a good tool for getting a broad overview of what pages might need attention and additional testing for page speed.
This tool doesn’t provide any details beyond just whether pages on the site pass, fail, or need improvement. Therefore, it is best used in just the initial diagnosis and flagging of pages that might need further analysis and work. The data for this report is pulled from real user experience, like the Field Data from PSI. This could mean that information might not always be available for pages if the traffic for them isn’t high enough. In those cases, those URLs will not show in the report, so you risk not getting flagged about pages that could still be struggling with page speed.
Understanding Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV)
Google’s Core Web Vitals are broken down into three different metrics: Largest Content Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
- Largest Content Paint (LCP): This is the measurement of the amount of time the largest visual element on the page takes to load. This is often a hero image of a main headline. Making sure this loads effectively often means that clients are seeing key elements and information immediately.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): This is the measurement of the page’s responsiveness to user input, such as clicking a button or filling out a form. Slow INP is the biggest issue when it comes to users converting. This metric was historically called First Input Delay (FID), but it has since been replaced by INP.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is the measurement of how much page content unexpectedly moves around while the page is loading. This can cause frustration from users, for example, if a button ends up moving just as they were about to click it.
While these are the key elements determining the final CWV grade, there are additional key metrics that also go into your general site speed health. Using these with the previous metrics can help better guide developers to specific issues that might need to be addressed.
- First Content Paint (FCP): This is the measurement of when the very first item appears. This could be anything from a text block to a background color. The first element to load will be the indicator to users that the site is opening, so it’s important to make sure it appears quickly.
- Total Blocking Time (TBT): This is the measurement of the amount of time that the main thread of the browser is blocked, which prevents user interactions. This directly impacts INP scoring.
- Speed Index: This is the measurement of how fast the content visually populates on the screen during the loading process.
Key Optimizations for Improving Page Speed
Once you have tested your page and site speed, you can start working on addressing any issues that were flagged. Often, this means optimizations to address very specific issues on your site. There are a couple of general types of optimizations that are often implemented in order to improve page speed.
Image & Media Optimization
Oftentimes, one of the biggest hang-ups in loading a page is the media on it. This could be high-resolution attorney headshots, a cinematic skyline shot, or a video of a team member discussing key elements of a practice area. Images may need to be compressed in order to reduce file size without diminishing the quality. Additionally, ensure that you are utilizing next-generation image formats such as WebP or AVIF when possible, as they are designed to load faster.
Hosting & Caching
Even if the site itself is perfectly optimized for site speed, it could still have issues if the server it’s on is too slow. Make sure your site invests in fast and reliable web hosting that can help ensure fast server response times. Enabling browser caching is also beneficial as it allows browsers to remember certain files after the first visit, helping them load almost instantly upon future visits. Content Delivery Networks (CDN) can also be used to efficiently serve pages to users by storing copies of the site’s static files on multiple servers around the world. This way, when someone visits the site, it can automatically serve the content stored on the closest server to them, reducing the travel distance of that data.
Code Minification & Deferral
Behind the pages on your site is a mass of code that browsers have to read in order to show the content. Ensuring that your code is tidy and that anything unnecessary is removed is key to helping browsers read the page. You can also delay or defer less critical scripts in order to ensure that any highly valuable content loads first.
Don’t Wait to Fix Your Site Speed
Site speed isn’t just a metric for developers; it’s a key element in your firm’s rankings, its competitiveness, and lead generation. A slow site does more than just annoy visitors; it directly affects engagement and performance. Google rewards efficiency, and within the legal market, efficiency often equals trust. Making site and page speed a priority is vital in both improving and maintaining your law firm’s online success.
While testing tools are free and can flag some easy opportunities with tools and information discussed here, interpreting the complex data and identifying more specific issues requires specialized expertise. As a legal marketing agency, we are experienced in developing and optimizing websites specifically for law firms. We translate those technical issues into prioritized fixes that deliver measurable improvements in site speed. Stop losing potential clients and reach out to Postali today to elevate your firm’s online performance.