With 60% of users visiting their website using a mobile device, Experian wanted to take advantage of any available opportunities to improve the mobile user experience. By focusing specifically on cutting page load times, they aimed to drive engagement and revenue, as well as build business cases for further investment in mobile development.
About Experian
Consumer credit reporting agency
www.experian.co.uk
Goals
Improve mobile user experience to drive engagement and revenue
Build business cases for further development investments
Approach
Invested in a web performance tool
Created data-driven correlation to demonstrate relationship between site speed and revenue
Implemented accelerated mobile pages (AMP)
Optimised key pages by following web performance best practice
Results
Cut average page load times from 8 to less than 1.5 seconds on key conversion driven pages
To begin, the Experian team invested in a web performance measurement tool. They then produced a data-driven correlation to demonstrate the impact of site speed on revenue. From a conversion point of view, this proved that every one second of delay was costing the business significantly.
By showing Experian’s performance versus their competitors, Web Page Test added further strength to their argument. With the site taking an average of 8 seconds to load on mobile devices, stakeholders agreed that something needed to be done.
"The importance of a great user experience is key for us, so much so that we have site speed as a key metric in our exec monthly KPI reports. The success has caught the imagination of site owners across the business and led to greater momentum behind creating more key pages using AMP"
- Tracy Abraham, Consumer Marketing Director at Experian
In an effort to improve site speed and positively affect the conversion rate, Experian partnered with Google and took a two-pronged approach. First they built a number of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which cut the average load time to just 1.5 seconds (without the Google cache). Second they optimised key complex pages, such as the homepage, by following web performance best practice.
What’s more, the work has helped underline the importance of mobile user experience. A slide dedicated to site speed now appears in the company’s exec monthly KPI report. The success of this initiative has also led to the speed agenda being pushed across the company and to create more key pages using AMP.
