Page Speed Optimization Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?

Why does page speed matter?

For businesses today, page speed matters because of users and search engines.

USERS

From a user perspective, speed is critical.

Today, people expect a website to load within two seconds. If it doesn’t, they have a high chance of leaving your website and visiting a competitor’s site. The truth, however, is that website load times often exceed two seconds.

A recent study, for example, discovered that the average load time for mobile sites is 15 seconds. For reference, more than 50 percent of the world’s Internet traffic comes from mobile devices, which is why companies need to consider and prioritize the mobile user experience.

As a load time of 15 seconds is eight seconds longer than users expect, it causes a lot of shoppers to spend their money elsewhere. It also costs companies valuable sales.

If your website takes longer than two seconds to load, you can trust that your website is losing your business money.

SEARCH ENGINES

If you’re familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), you may already know that page speed can influence your organic rankings in search results on Google, Bing, and other search engines. When you don’t rank at the top of search results, it’s difficult to reach your ideal shopper, which cuts into your revenue.

What if you’re new to SEO, though? Keep reading for a quick SEO review.

SEO refers to an umbrella of digital marketing strategies. These strategies all work towards the same goal of improving your online visibility. When you optimize your online presence and rank higher in search results, you can reach more customers and ultimately earn more revenue.

For a better explanation, look at the example below.

It’s a result for the search “wicker furniture cushions.” You can see the first four organic search results. If your business sold wicker furniture cushions, you’d want to appear first in this search considering that the first search result earns more than 30 percent of search traffic.

If you have a slow page speed, however, it’s not going to happen.

Google relies on more than 200 ranking factors when determining its search result rankings, and page speed is one of them. When Google sees a webpage with poor or average page speed, it recognizes how that impacts the experience of users. As a result, Google ranks it lower in search results.

That’s why if you want to appear in those relevant and valuable search results, you need to upgrade your optimization game. It’s not enough to publish a webpage that features the phrase “wicker furniture cushions” and a gallery of your products. You also need to make your webpage as fast as possible.

While page speed matters to both search engines and users, it’s essential for the same reason: user experience.

How can I check my website’s page speed?

If you’re worried about your page speed now, you can check your page speed for free. Google offers a free tool, called PageSpeed Insights, that assesses the speed of your webpages on mobile and desktop devices. The best part is you can access your page speed report in an instant.

Just enter your website’s URL and click the “Analyze” button.

In the example above, Google grades the website’s page speed as average. When you submit your website for analysis, Google also provides recommendations for improvement. In most cases, these are technical suggestions that your development team, or the agency providing page speed optimization services, will understand.

How much should I pay for page speed optimization?

With a price range of $50 to $12,000, a lot of businesses wonder about page speed optimization pricing. What’s a fair and reasonable price for your website, and how can you make sure your company’s decision-makers understand that this service is worth the cost?

To understand what you should pay for page speed optimization services, look at how agencies price their services:

• Hourly rate ($50 to $150 / hour): A lot of businesses that offer page speed optimization base their pricing on an hourly rate. At a minimum, page speed optimization requires 20 hours. This pricing model allows for a customized strategy, which works well because sites vary when it comes to what slows them down.

• Flat rate ($95 to $400 / site): Some agencies, however, offer a flat rate for their page speed optimization services. While businesses like the fixed rate, agencies often place a page limit cap on their services, usually five or six pages, which can result in a low upfront cost and a high final charge at the end.

• Hybrid rate ($1250 to $12,000 / site): This pricing model, which WebFX offers, is a combination of flat- and hourly-rate pricing models. With a hybrid rate, the agency bases its page speed optimization pricing off a flat rate, which scales off a set number of hours dedicated to your website. It’s also free of any page limits.

Now, what should your company pay for page speed optimization services? Start by answering these questions:

• How many pages do we have on our website?
• What is the total number of pages that need optimized for speed?
• How many pages are high-priority when it comes to speed?
• What is our preferred pricing model?
• What is our maximum budget?
• Which agencies do we want to work alongside?

Use your answers to determine what your company should pay for page speed optimization services.

In most cases, your pricing model preferences and your website’s size have the most influence on what you decide to pay. It’s also worth mentioning that plenty of businesses offer “cheap” or “low-cost” pricing for their page speed optimization services.

While tempting, it’s often a scenario where you get what you pay for, which means a website or a webpage that’s only a tiny bit faster. If a company’s prices seem too good to be true, they probably are, which is why it’s smart to invest your money elsewhere.

What determines page speed optimization prices?

If you’re looking for more information on page speed optimization pricing, this section is an excellent resource. You can learn about what factors influence prices, whether for an hourly, flat, or hybrid rate, which can help you make an informed decision later.

The five features that have the most impact on page speed optimization prices include:

1. WEBSITE SIZE

Your website’s size has a massive influence on your page speed optimization prices. If you have a five-page site, versus a 50-page one, you can expect lower prices due to the time required. An exception is if you’re purchasing page speed optimization services at a flat or hybrid rate.

Remember, however, that many flat-rate fees include a page limit cap.

From a pricing perspective, your website’s size can influence what type of pricing model you choose. For example, if you have a large website, like an ecommerce site, it’s more cost-effective to partner with an agency that offers a hybrid rate rather than an hourly rate.

2. PAGE SPEED

Browse the page speed optimization pricing pages of a few providers. You’ll notice that some mention the current speed of your webpage and scale their prices or packages off that number. You can find your page speed with Google Page Insights.

In most cases, a website with a slower speed score tends to cost more than a site with a faster speed score.

Why? If your website’s already fast, it tends to require less work than a site that’s sluggish. That’s why it’s worth investing in routine page speed optimization services, as you can continue to maintain your website’s speed and make minor improvements to it.

3. PROJECT HOURS

If you’re interested in an agency that offers hybrid or hourly pricing, your project hours will also influence your page speed optimization costs. For hybrid pricing, most service providers use hourly ranges in increments of 25, 50, and 100.

The more time required to put into a website, the more the project costs.

In most cases, companies are unsure how many hours their website requires for page speed optimization. That’s normal. When you contact an agency or request a quote, they can provide advice on what hourly range is best for your website.

For controlling your costs, it’s best to set a hard limit for how many hours developers dedicate. If you’re partnering with an hourly agency, for example, specify in your written agreement when you want developers to conclude their work. For example, they can limit their time to 20 hours.

4. WEBSITE PLATFORM

Your website’s platform can also affect your page speed optimization pricing. A few common platforms include:

• WordPress
• Shopify
• GoDaddy
• Wix

Depending on your business, you may have an in-house developer that created your website with HTML. This decision can influence your page speed optimization costs, as well as agency selection. While a lot of service providers specialize in the earlier platforms, only a few offer their services for more complicated sites.

From a pricing perspective, platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Shopify can cost less than more complex platforms.

5. AGENCY FEATURES

Pricing for page speed optimization services also depends on your agency.

If you choose an agency with less industry experience, they often charge less for their services. While a lot of businesses like these upfront savings, there are often downsides. For example, these agencies often have a smaller staff, which can result in your optimization taking longer and costing more if they charge an hourly rate.

The background of their team can also result in overlooked optimization opportunities. For your company, that means you’re paying for a service and not receiving the full value of it, which doesn’t maximize your budget or page speed.

As you browse page speed optimization prices, keep these cost factors in mind.

What do page speed optimization services include?

Like pricing for page speed optimization, deliverables for your service also vary. That’s because your agency should tailor their services to your website or webpage’s unique needs, which is what we do for our satisfied clients.

Here are a few examples of what most page speed optimization services should include:

• Website optimization
• HTTPS setup
• HTTPS request reduction
• Image optimization
• JavaScript minimization
• Caching configuration
• Redirect optimization

As you can tell, a lot of these features are technical — and probably new to you and your team. That’s why it’s helpful to partner with an agency that specializes in page speed optimization and features a dedicated team of developers.

It’s also an immense benefit to have an agency that doesn’t hesitate to answer your questions about these terms. WebFX, for example, ensures that our clients understand our recommendations, whether it’s for page speed optimization, SEO, or another digital marketing service we offer.

Why invest in page speed optimization?

When it comes to page speed optimization, you want to make it a priority. It offers numerous advantages, which can help your company earn more conversions, sales, and revenue. Those wins can give your business the chance to achieve its biggest goals, like opening a new location, launching a new product, or hiring a new team member.

Five of the most notable benefits of investing in page speed optimization include:

1. IMPROVE YOUR USER EXPERIENCE

With today’s users expecting a website to load in two seconds or less, you can bet that a faster website improves their online experience. That’s why mobile sites that load within that timeframe have a 15 percent higher conversion rate than other mobile websites.

Providing shoppers with the best possible online experience is critical.

Almost 90 percent of people shop with a competitor after a poor user experience (UX), which can include not only your page speed but also other features, like your navigation. That’s why more businesses are investing in page speed optimization, as well as UX testing.

The best part is that improvements to UX offer the tremendous return of $100 for every $1 invested.

2. ACCELERATE YOUR CONVERSION RATE

With page speed optimization, your website’s conversion rates can move to a whole new level. Just a one-second increase in your page speed can boost conversion rates by seven percent. What does that kind of growth look like, though?

For perspective, check out this table.*

It looks at how much money your website loses every year without that one-second increase.

*Note: These are not guaranteed results, but calculated according to a seven-percent increase in conversions with each one-second improvement to your website.

Compare the average cost of page speed optimization, which is $50 to $12,000, to those losses. If your company makes a $1000 per day, you would make back the cost of your page speed optimization services and then some in a year.

Why lose that money if your company can make it, instead?

3. MAXIMIZE YOUR TIME

While you could do page speed optimization on your own, it would take a lot of time and knowledge.

If you're running your own business, department, or projects, your website is one small blip on the radar when it comes to your responsibilities. And, chances are, you don't have the time to focus your efforts on page speed, and neither does anybody else at your company.

When you hire an agency like WebFX for page speed optimization, you can focus on your top priorities. Plus, you eliminate the worry and stress of leading or handling the project in-house. You also save a tremendous amount of time by not having to learn all the technicalities of page speed optimization.

4. INCREASE YOUR WEBSITE TRAFFIC

More than 70 percent of businesses and 80 percent of consumers start their research for a new product or service online. In most cases, they rely on a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo to help them find what they’re looking for. That’s why more than 50 percent of users discover a new company after a search.

Improving your page speed, as well as optimizing your webpages for SEO, helps you rank better in relevant search results. With a better position in search results, your website can earn more valuable traffic. While traffic can sometimes appear as a vanity metric, it’s still useful.

For example, you can see how much traffic you’re driving to your site and how much of that traffic converts. That can help your SEO agency or in-house team discover new ways to improve your strategy, such as by upgrading your website with UX testing.

If your website doesn’t have the speed to rank in search results, however, your team never receives that data that could potentially improve your website.

5. ENHANCE YOUR SEO STRATEGY

Google considers more than 200 ranking factors when developing its search results. While your business needs a smart and competitive SEO strategy, it also requires a fast website. That’s why page speed optimization is so valuable to companies investing in SEO.

With a fast and optimized website, your business can earn a valuable place in relevant search results. It’s an enormous win, as 75 percent of users stick to the first page of search results while only 25 percent click to the second page.

If you want to maintain your rankings in search results, however, page speed optimization needs to become an ongoing strategy, like SEO. By making page speed optimization a long-term part of your digital marketing strategy, you can maximize the results of your SEO.

How long does page speed optimization take?

While turnaround times vary, page speed optimization generally requires 20 to 100 hours of developer work.

As a result, most agencies need at least a week before they can finish optimizing your website. If you have a hard deadline for your site, alert service providers before you sign with them. That way, they can let you know if the project’s feasible for them.

What kind of page speed increases can businesses expect?

With page speed optimization services, results vary. They also depend on several factors, like your website’s current speed and your agency’s experience. That’s another reason why you want to invest in page speed optimization services versus paying for the cheapest option.

For reference, you can refer to these estimates for typical page speed score increases:

Disclaimer:

Typical Page Speed score increases (Assuming WebFX has full website/server access & is allowed to work on the highest impact areas vs. client directed areas to focus). These estimates are based on the typical setup of an average ~200 page website. Results for each unique website and indvidual page will vary depending on how it is configured.

Is page speed optimization a one-time thing?

A lot of companies look at page speed optimization as a one-time investment. In many cases, though, businesses continue to update their website with content and webpages not optimized for speed. While it’s a smart decision to add to your site, it often leads to slow speeds again.

That’s why page speed optimization is an ongoing process.

Your team will always need to monitor the speed of your website and webpages. If you look at page speed optimization as a once-and-done service, your site will struggle to meet the standards of users and search engines. This costs your company money.

With page speed optimization, it’s an ongoing investment in your company and its ability to generate revenue.

How often should you optimize your pages for speed?

For the best results, digital marketers and developers recommend optimizing your page speed on a routine schedule, especially if you’re continuing to add new content and webpages to your site. Regular page speed optimization can also minimize your page speed optimization prices and project times.

Keep your website up to speed by investing in page speed optimization once a year.