Think with google –
calculate your potential revenue

Typically, site speed is measured by the 90th percentile of First Contentful Paint which is taken directly from the CrUX report. In a nutshell, this works by identifying the moment a website appears in a browser and then tracks the time it takes for the site to become fully visible and interactive.

The Chrome User Experience Report or CrUX utilises a ranking a methodology that combines three metrics – First Contentful Paint, DOMContentLoaded and Onload. The reason for this is that no one metric is capable of accurately capturing mobile site speed and user experience by itself.

It is worth noting that because of the way it tracks three different metrics a website with a slower First Contentful Paint time can rank higher than one with a faster Paint time.

The Mobile Scorecard provides a clear and concise analysis of the speed of any website. The process couldn’t be simpler, and within a matter of seconds, you’ll know exactly how fast your website is and how it stacks up against your competitors. This is important as if your competitor’s website is faster, you could be losing potential customers.

Likewise, a slower website could be cheating you out of potential earnings (we’ll come to this later in the article). Therefore, it’s important to know where you sit relative to rival companies.

But why should you trust this data? Well, you should trust this data because it comes directly from Google. Quite simply, the Mobile Scorecard accesses data contained within the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). This data enables the tool to compare multiple site speeds and compile all of this into easy-to-follow statistics.

This incredible tool can provide an accurate means of reporting on thousands of websites from a dozen countries. Furthermore, is that this tool is in many ways a spiritual successor to the PageSpeed Insights Tool introduced in January 2018.

That is to say that the Mobile Scorecard actually draws from the same database of Chrome user latency data making it an incredibly reliable resource. Remember, according to Google mid-range devices using 3G, a page load time of no less than 5 seconds is recommended. For devices operating a 4G connection, the response time should be no longer than 3 seconds.

By itself, the Mobile Scorecard only provides a snapshot but when combined with the Conversion Impact Calculator, only then do you get the complete picture. Why? You might ask. Well, the Mobile Scorecard simply tells you how long your site takes to load and how it stacks up against your competitors.

The Conversion Impact Calculator takes this information, combines it with other metrics and informs you on how revenue can be increased (or decreased) by implementing an increase in site speed. Let’s use an example to illustrate this:

At the time of writing this, it took Facebook 2.8s to load fully. If we lower this to 1.8s and assume 1,000 average monthly visitors, $500 (£358) average order value and a conversion rate of 1%, this could potentially translate to an increase of around $2,507 (£1,795) in revenue per month. Obviously, Facebook is not an E-Commerce website and so wouldn’t have an average order value, but you get the gist.

As with the Mobile Scorecard, this data comes directly from Google and is based on data from The State of Online Retail Performance report published in April 2017. What makes this report relevant is that it provides a complete breakdown of how each second of delay in page load times can hurt conversion rates by up to 20%.

In short, to work out your ‘Average Order Value’, you simply take your total revenue and divide that by the number of orders taken. Bear in mind, however, that this isn’t 100% accurate. To improve accuracy further, it is suggested that you factor in expenses, the cost of goods sold, etc. and subtract these from your total revenue.

Start by selecting your country and the connection you’re testing for in the drop-down menus.

In the top box, enter the URL of the website you wish to track and click the arrow to the right.

The website will then be displayed in the box below alongside its site speed.

To compare your competitor’s websites, simply enter their site domains into the top bar, and they will appear in the box below.

This will then provide you with a clear indication as to where your site ranks against your competitor’s websites.

So you’ve entered your information into the Mobile Scorecard, and you now have your website’s speed rating; so what comes next? Well, you’ll want to see what this means for your company in terms of potential revenue. So the next step would be to use the Conversion Impact Calculator:

Your Domain and Current Speed should already be populated in the top two boxes.

First, begin by entering an amount into the box titled ‘Average Monthly Visitors’.

Next, enter an amount into the box titled ‘Average Order Value’.

Finally, input your website’s current ‘Conversion Rate’.

Underneath, you will see a slider that is pre-set to your Current Site Speed.

Using your mouse, adjust this slider to reduce the site speed load time (increase the speed).

Above the slider, the value will change to reflect how much revenue you could potentially generate by increasing site speed.

If we refer back to the example above, we noticed that by simply reducing the page load time from 2.8s to 1.8s (based on the metrics provided), this translated to a revenue increase of over $2000 (£1400) per month.

Don’t worry; this doesn’t involve you staring at spreadsheets and long and overly convoluted reports. In fact, it is honestly quite simple and can all be done with Google Analytics. This is a service that we at edirect can provide as part of your SEO, or if you prefer, you can follow this handy step-by-step guide:

For the purpose of this guide, we will assume that you already hold a Google Analytics account.

First, start by logging into your Google Analytics account.

Navigate to Overview > All Accounts and select the website that you wish to view.

Next to the website account name, you’ll see “View Report”. Click this.

In the upper right corner of the dashboard, select “Date Range”.

This will display visitor statistics for specific date ranges.

Select a start and end date using the calendar tool. Click “Apply”.

While scrolling down the page, you will come across the “Site Usage” section.

Note down the ‘Average Monthly Visitor’ statistic displayed here.

Repeat this process for each month.

Add the values for each month together then divide by the number of months being tracked.

And there you have it – your ‘Average Monthly Visitors’!

Conversions are, quite simply, metrics that track whenever a visitor to your site takes a meaningful action, e.g. completes a transaction. This quite simply relates to a visitor converting to an actual customer. Conversions are an excellent way of keeping track of and managing your ROI. In effect, these can serve as benchmarks and highlight areas of success as well as areas for improvement.

To obtain your conversion rate, you must first set up website tracking using a tool such as Google Analytics. This allows for conversion data to be collected in real-time in a way that can be accessed and analysed quickly and easily.

Start by gathering the necessary data from your chosen analytical software.

For ‘Lead Generation’ follow the formula:
Number of Leads Collected / Total Traffic to Site x 100 = Conversion Rate.

For ‘Sales’ follow the formula:
Number of Sales / Number of Visitors x 100 = Conversion Rate.