Brands with fast-loading mobile sites see better traffic and conversions from their news content because speed is the most important to UX.

Marketers know it’s SEO best practice to publish news content every day so search crawlers frequent their pages and their brands stay at the forefront of industry developments. However, articles might not reach their full potential if branded websites are slow and don’t load quick enough, according to an EPiServer report.

Around 47 percent of surveyed smartphone and tablet owners say they use mobile websites and applications to read news content. Four in 10 say site speed is the most important aspect of their experiences, yet 49 percent report slow load times from brands’ websites.

Brafton is a major proponent for prioritizing site speed. We previously reported on Colman data that found customers expect online content to lead within two seconds or less. If sites take longer than three seconds to load, 40 percent of visitors will abandon pages and turn to another source.

EPiServer says that when it comes to publishing news for mobile readers, speed is the most important consideration. If articles and images aren’t optimized to display quickly, brands’ content metrics might show high bounce rates instead of traffic and conversion improvements.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.