Industry analysis
October 2017
ICON in partnership with Katanya presents a benchmark analysis of web performance between 45 ICON Member Firms across Australia and New Zealand.
Let’s face it, if your website is slow for your local audience or indeed any market you’re targeting then you’re on the back foot from the first click so to speak. This benchmark analysis is a snapshot of web performance in Professional Services and B2B markets in Australia and New Zealand. It has been prepared for our 2017 ICON Australia and New Zealand Conference.
It is well recognised that slow sites lose visitors and have lower conversion rates. This report looks at whether your site is quick loading and is as fast in Shanghai as it is in Sydney. And it looks at whether your hard work developing content and thought leadership is returning results for you on social media and search engines.
This report highlights where the industry is doing well and opportunities for improvement. This is our first piece of thought leadership under the new ICON brand.
In short, it is about how fast your website downloads and displays. Do pages download in less than two seconds on desktop and four seconds on mobile? Do the pages display quickly?
More broadly, is it resonating with your audience? Are they following your social media accounts and linking to your posts? And finally (but beyond the scope of this report) are visitors engaging on your site and converting into leads?
For B2B markets organisations, the end goal of a website is often not direct online sales, but it is to influence the influencers and other stakeholders. It is to increase an organisation’s reach, to sign-up visitors to newsletters, to new tools, products and most importantly to make contact.
Slow websites lose visitors. Slow websites also rank lower (for being slow) on search engines. Speed will directly impact an organisation’s awareness and conversion efforts. Industry leading studies from Google, Akamai and others show time after time that sites taking longer than two seconds on desktop and four seconds on mobile lose up to 50% of their conversions.
Web performance is important because poor performance is undermining your other marketing efforts and the cost is business leads.
This study was created to showcase the web performance of professional services and B2B markets organisations as a collective, to find patterns, and to identify the top performers.
It was created for the ICON’s Australia and New Zealand Conference to help support and advance the sector’s performance in the digital space.
The websites of 45 mid-tier and large firms were analysed as part of this benchmark analysis providing a snapshot of the sector.
It should be a conversation starter and we hope it provides some food for thought.
Pursuing web performance ebook
This study of the B2B and professional services industry's current state of web performance was produced in partnership with Katanya. Katanya works with clients to define, develop and sustain brilliant digital experiences that engage their audiences. Having worked with professional services and financial services organisations in over 30 countries, they understand the mechanics of partnerships, enabling user advocacy, the nature of services and different selling life cycles. In an age where everything is digital, they don’t just do digital: They help transform how the world sees, meets, greets and connects with you. |