the ultimate Web Speed Cost Calculator
This calculator will help you determine if there are any losses to your marketing budget based on the fact that web pages load slower than the industry’s benchmark.
The benchmark is 3 seconds. Everything beyond that number is a high statistical probability of a drop off. People tend to skip the website loading process if it takes too long.
This calculator also shows the opportunity costs due to the same problem of slow loading speed. Enter data from your website’s analytics dashboard.
Returning visitors per day
People who have previously visited your website and now have returned.
Get the data on website visitors from your analytics. Input the average number of returning visitors per day.
New visitors per day
People visiting your website for the first time.
Get the data on new website visitors from your analytics. Input the average number of first-time visitors per day.
Average visitors per day
The amount of visitors your website gets on average per day. Sum of NV & RV.
This number represents the sum of new and returning visitors on a daily basis.
Acquired new visitors per day
People who came to your website through pay-per-click campaigns.
How many newcomers out of all the new visitors have you acquired through online advertising campaigns such as PPC, CPM or similar? This number should be less or equal to the New Visitors (NV) value. It is possible that all of your new visitors are coming in as paid traffic.
Time frame in days
Set the amount of days to calculate for.
What is the period you want to calculate the marketing budget losses and opportunity costs? Set the time frame in days.
Website load speed
The statistical time it takes your website to load its contents.
If your website’s loading speed is less or equals to 3 seconds, you don’t need to use this calculator at all. Based on the stats visitors are OK with waiting for three seconds for a web page to load.
Conversion rate in %
How many website visitors become your clients, X out of 100.
Get your stats on how many visitors turn into your clients on average. It could be 2 out of 100 or perhaps 5 in 10 000. Adjust your conversion rate accordingly: 2% or 0.05%.
Average cheque in money
The amount of money clients spend with your company on average.
What is the average spend of an average client? —_($$)_— In other words, what is the revenue per client per year?
Costs per click
The amount of money you pay for every single click on average.
How much are you paying for each click using online advertising? It might be different for pay-per-click campaigns and cost-per-mile ads. Input the average amount you are paying for clicks based on the click-through rate of all your online ads.
Why is website speed important?
Numerous studies have shown that the longer it takes for the website to load and become functional, the more visitors leave thinking that something is wrong, faulty or simply by getting tired of waiting.
We had decided to calculate how serious the impact could be and were shocked by the results. If your company sells products to thousands of people on a daily basis, your business is losing thousands of dollars (euros) in marketing budget and opportunity costs.
If your business relies on the quality of leads and the average deal (cheque) is high, slow website can be devastating to your company.
Every prospect who had decided to quit waiting before the website has loaded, will go to a competitor and increase their chances of success.
Read an article about how slow website speed destroys your business.
Online advertising losses formula
AL = ANV x (AS-SB) x BC x CPC x T
Opportunity costs formula
OC = (NV x (AS-SB) x BC) x CR x AC x T
Variables used in the formula
AV — average number of visitors per day = 1000;
RV — returning visitors per day (are OK with waiting) = 40%;
NV — new visitors = 60%;
ANV — acquired new visitors = NV/2 = 30%;
AV = RV+NV;
BC — bounce constant = 10%;
CR — conversion rate (visitor to customer) = 2%;
T — time = 365 days;
AC — average cheque (purchase) = 50 USD;
SB — speed benchmark = 3 seconds;
AS — actual website load speed = 8 seconds;
CAC — customer acquisition cost;
CPC — cost per click = 2 USD;
L — losses.
What is a good website speed and how fast should it load?
There are several things that effect the page load speed: the distance between the user and the server, the size of the page, number of elements, the sequence in which certain elements are loaded — just to name a few.
In general, it is a good idea to keep your page load speed below 3 second threshold due to the fact that website visitors tend to abandon websites that load slowly. In other words, slow websites provide bad user experience (UX). Recent (2021) Google’s initiative — Core Web Vitals — introduced signifficant changes to the ranking approach suggesting that UX is going to play a crucial role in ranking pages that appear in search results.
To know more about this particular metric and other industry benchmarks, visit another page where we provide links to various resources — Website Speed Optimization.
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