User Satisfaction
Even if your website loads fast, if users often leave your site without any meaningful interaction, this will negatively impact your rankings.
The importance of speed and satisfaction links back to Google’s core fundamental mission: to deliver a positive user experience.
Google wants users to find what they are looking for the moment they’re looking for it, and they measure this by user interaction with specific pages.
These metrics – such as bounce rate, pages per session, and average time on site – tell Google very important details about a website’s user experience.
Conversions are the best way to measure user interaction. These occur when users complete desired actions, like filling out forms, clicking phone links, completing registrations, or making purchases.
These are direct cases where users have engaged and gotten what they needed from their search results, proving to Google that a site is relevant.
Another useful way to measure user satisfaction is through heatmapping. Heatmaps show how users interact with websites by measuring where they are clicking and how far they are scrolling.
This data is specifically helpful in showing unexpected ways users interact with websites. For example, your website visitors might be consistently clicking on a photo that they expect to open to another page, but currently, it does not link anywhere.
Remember, Google’s core fundamental mission is to deliver a positive user experience.