The other day, while I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, I came across a pretty interesting post from Sean Frank.

And I think this is going to settle the page speed debate for GOOD!

===

“As someone who is handsome, rich, and smart I have one thing to tell you:

Site speed doesnt matter all that much. We tested it. No app/SAAS that increases site speed will pay for itself.

Your site is probably fast enough.

Now go take that money and spend more on facebook.”

===

I completely agree with Sean Frank here — except the Facebook part…

(If you don’t know who Sean Frank is, he’s the CEO of Ridge, which is one of the biggest and fastest-growing eCommerce brands.)

A lot of people think that you need to have the fastest website on the internet.

And I’m here to tell you that…

You don’t actually…

Your Google Pagespeed Insights score does not need to be 90+.

And NO, it isn’t going to affect your conversion rate.

Personally, I haven’t done any page speed optimization for our clients in the last 18 months.

And this hasn't negatively impacted any of our sites.

In 2021, Google rolled out the “Core Web Vitals” update, which focused primarily on user experience.

And the biggest metric that people were concerned with was page speed.

Everyone was talking about it.

And everyone was looking for web devs to optimize their page speed.

Every one of my freelance clients at the time were asking me if we could improve their page speed.

Our developer could easily handle that – and at the time – it seemed like the right thing to do. 

But now when I look back at it… that was a complete waste of money and time.

I've had other SEOs also tell me that they don't focus on page speed because…

It isn't really that important.

Just last week, one of our brands that does $5M+ dollars per year, asked me:

“Kai, should we fix our page speed?”

And my answer was:

“No, there are bigger levers to pull.”

Page speed isn't going to make a huge difference to your SEO.

BUT high-quality content, internal links, and high-authority backlinks will.

If you are doing all these correctly then your pages are going to rank at the top of the SERPs.

Now this is where the real problem starts…

CRO seems to be the new offer that A LOT of brands and B2B owners are getting pitched.

CRO — which stands for Conversion Rate Optimization — is entirely useless for 90% of business owners.

Sure, there are a handful of them on Twitter & LinkedIn who get real results.

Now…

When I said that most business owners don’t need to invest in CRO, here’s what I mean: 

For an eCommerce brand that’s doing less than $100-150k per month, you don’t have NEARLY ENOUGH visitors or data points to reliably invest in CRO. 

And you cannot expect to make the right decision about the structure of your PDP when you run tests with insufficient data.

Your money is far better spent on paid ads, email/SMS, or even a new coffee maker for your office – seriously, your money is better spent on a Keurig.

Here are two short stories to illustrate my belief: 

1. A brand I consult for worked with a CRO agency for 3 months. They pace about $30-40k per month (well below the $100-150k/month mark). The CRO agency claimed they tripled their conversion rate over the course of 3 months.
   
   Not true. In fact, they just filtered the data to branded searches only, meaning the 3x’d conversion rate was actually just people who were already searching for the brand. Pathetic.
   

2. I got a Twitter DM a few months ago – the guy pitched me a Loom video to optimize my agency landing page for better conversion rates. Sure, it’s a free video, I took him up on it.
   
   The first thing he told me was to change the color of my calendar booking button, which was at the bottom of the page. No reference to the actual headline or the page content – he said the color of the button was why I wasn’t booking more calls (lol). 

…If you think changing the color of the CTA button is going to boost my conversion rate by a mile, then I don’t need to hear anything else you have to say.

Now, I’m not telling you that changing the color of your button doesn't matter.

What matters the most is your offer and what you sell.

Whether it’s B2B or DTC, people buy your product or service because of: 

• The price

• Shipping costs (if any)

• Your reviews

• How much it will impact their lives

• How much they trust you

And oftentimes, a combination of all of these things.

If you have a really good offer that is irresistible, people are going to buy from you regardless of whether they’re colorblind or not.

If you have a shitty offer, product, or hidden shipping costs and think that changing the color of your CTA is going to boost your conversion rate, you are sorely mistaken.

In conclusion:

Don’t invest in page speed ever and wait until you hit $100k/month to even think about CRO. 

Instead here’s what you should be focusing on:

1. Optimizing your Money pages

2. Building High Authority Backlinks

3. Writing relevant Blog content and becoming the topical authority.

I’ve just posted a YouTube video that shows exactly how to do all these and rank your site at the top of Google.

Check it out here:

Until next time,

Kai Cromwell