The other day I was in our office break room when I looked at the microwave. I then stuck my head out of the break room and asked the entire Firegang team, “Ask me what time it is.” The moment I got a response, I said, “Three seconds.” That’s because the microwave, instead of displaying the time like it usually does, showed ':03', which is of course the moment someone decided to open the door because they were far too impatient to wait three more seconds for their food to be heated up. This has now become a running joke in our office.

“What time is it?” one of us will ask.

“Three seconds.” Or sometimes, we’ll say, “Two seconds.”

In some ridiculous cases, the time will be one second.

When did we become so impatient that we can’t even wait a single second for our food to be heated up? Well, it turns out, that impatience doesn’t just relate to breakfast or lunchtime. It also transcends to website viewing.

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If someone lands on your dental website and it takes longer than three or four seconds for your website to load, most people aren’t going to wait around. Your website might as well take ten minutes to load. That’s how impatient we’ve all become.

Whether it’s fast food, quick airline travel or website load times, it’s now or never. This is the lesson you need to keep in mind when it comes to website marketing. If your dental site takes too long to load, new patients or even your current patients might not wait around. They’re going to quickly click over to a competitor’s site, leaving you standing beside an empty dental chair.

Google Also Likes a Fast Website

It turns out, your patients aren’t the only ones who like a fast website. The world’s largest search engine, Google, also prefers them. In fact, it’s been shown that slow loading websites suffer when it comes to search rankings. That’s right. If your website is a sloth, it might as well be invisible, because new and current patients aren’t going to be able to find it online.

Quick-loading websites, on the other hand, show more prominence online and are more likely to be clicked and enjoyed. Google always wants to deliver the best web experience possible to search users. And when your website is quick to load, the person viewing and using your website is going to have a memorable experience, whether they’re looking for your phone number or learning about the latest and greatest in clear braces, Invisalign.

How do you know if your website is slow or fast loading? There’s a quick test to find out.

How to Test the Speed of Your Website

Step 1: Visit Tools.Pingdom.com

Point your favorite browser to the address: http://tools.pingdom.com. Here you will notice a white box where you can insert your dental website address.

Step 2: Enter Your Dental Website Address

For the sake of this test, I decided to use one of our client’s websites: http://www.drtimmerman.com/. After submitting the site, the Pingdom test will bring up a series of test results. This only takes a few moments.

Step 3: Analyze Your Results

You now have several statistics that will give you a brief snapshot of how and ‘how fast’ your website loads. Don’t worry too much about the Perf. Grade, the requests or page size statistics. Your primary focus is on load time, which we’ve already established is of the utmost importance.

To help you gauge the results, here is a table you can use:

Good:	< 4 Seconds
Better:	< 3 Seconds
Best:	< 2 Seconds

As you can see, it’s always best for your website to take a second or two to load. The results above for Dr. Timmerman’s website show that his is indeed a fast loading website and primed for superior rankings in Google. It’s also more likely to provide a stellar web experience, because users won’t have to wait for the site to load on desktops or mobile devices.

If your site takes three seconds or less to load, that’s ok, but your load times could always be better. And if your site is taking longer than four sites to load, again, it might as well take ten minutes, because most people aren’t going to wait around.

What time is it? It’s time for you to do something about your dental website if it’s taking far too long to load. What can you do about it? The answer is simple.

What If Your Website Takes Too Long to Load

The first step is to contact Firegang. Our digital marketing professionals will provide you with a free website assessment. We’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it so that you can provide an exceptional experience to users and be favored by Google and other search engines.

The alternative is to just leave your site like it is. And as we’ve already established with the running joke in our office, most people aren’t going to wait longer than three seconds for anything, even their food to cook. Can you afford to have people leave your website for a faster loading website? Make the right move and take the steps to make your site FAST. New and current patients will thank you, and Google will help you rank prominently, helping to deliver new business with a blazing quickness.

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