In 2023, Forbes Advisor completed a detailed survey and study of website statistics and what they mean to businesses and organizations vying for the attention and business of customers. The article covers 40 statistics, making it challenging to dig through them all — you know, the TL;DR (Too Long, Don’t Read) syndrome. So, we did the digging for you and came away with the seven stats that the owner of any business website would want to know.
Key takeaways from Forbes’ website statistics survey
1. Google accounts for 93% of all internet traffic
We knew Google was the #1 search engine but didn’t realize it garnered 93% of the traffic. This stat means you won’t be found if your site doesn’t work well with Google algorithms. This is why proper search engine optimization (SEO) for your website is crucial.
2. About 47% of people only give a website 2 seconds to load
Website visitors are an impatient bunch, according to the study. Forbes found that 47% of website visitors will leave if the site doesn’t load in 2 seconds. Another 40% exhibit greater patience, giving a site a full 3 seconds to load. If your website’s poor technology make your site slow to load, you lose a visitor in mere seconds — and that person will probably never come back.
3. Website visitors form an opinion about a site in 0.05 seconds
Okay, say your website loads fast enough to satisfy the 2 and 3-second crowd. Well, the battle’s not over. Call it the reaction to the hundreds or thousands of daily attempts to capture our attention, but users create an opinion of your website in a fraction of a second — 0.05 seconds, to be exact. To keep a visitor on your site, it must have an eye-catching design relevant to the visitor’s search, one that says that “this is a site worth my time.”.
4. Videos dramatically increase the amount of time spent on a page
Let’s say your website captures a visitor’s attention, and they click on a page of interest. In general, that person will spend 54 seconds on that page. However, the average time for pages with a video explodes to 6 minutes. Because the amount of time spent on a page is a significant signal to Google that they sent someone to a good page, consider adding videos to your site.
5. About 48% report basing their opinion of a business’ credibility on its website design
Nearly half of the study respondents said they judge the credibility of a business by its website design. This telling statistic means you cannot skimp on your website’s design any more than you can skimp on its content. If your site looks like it was slapped together or comes across as unprofessional, people will notice, and about 48% will think you’re not a credible operation.
6. Over 51% of US and 58% of global web traffic comes from mobile phones
With 4.88 billion smartphone users worldwide, it’s no wonder that 51.2% of US and 58.7% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. The implications for any business or organization are clear: if you rely on your website to drive growth, it must be mobile-friendly — looking as good on the small screen as on a PC and offering the same functionality as a desktop browser.
7. Over 42% of all websites are built with WordPress
In 2023, there were about 1.13 billion websites, with a new one coming online every three seconds. Of this vast number, 42.4% use WordPress (WP). WP’s market share means tens of thousands of developers can build websites on this platform, and there are thousands of extensions and apps designed to work seamlessly with WP. As a result, WP is the most powerful web development tool available and the most widely supported.
And because we want to make sure our clients get the best website possible, this is also why we specialize in building websites WordPress.
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