"My customers are patient people - they don't mind waiting an extra few seconds."
Even if it were true that your customers don't care about load times (and they do) Google does care.
Late last year, Google Head of Search Quality, Matt Cutts, announced that load times will become a search ranking factor.
It makes perfect sense for Google. They have to spend less time crawling sites (and using more power to do so - their major running cost) and they can deliver more user-friendly results to their users. After all, slow-loading sites are frustrating to navigate.
But that's only a little detail - will it really affect rankings?
If you're interested in search engine optimisation you'll probably know that good SEO is the cumulative result of dozens of small details. Site speed is likely one of hundreds of factors.
So, yes - by itself having a fast site isn't enough to get you high rankings. But combined with many other elements, it has an effect.
It probably won't come into effect for a while though, right?
Really, site load time already influences your website's visibility in the search engines. For example, slower sites are known to have fewer pages indexed by Google, which can mean less exposure for your site.
Even if you discount all of the SEO factors it's still worth giving your customers the best user experience possible. Because that nearly always equates to more sales.
(Check our web design and usability services if you're interested in improving your site.)
Keeping this theme going, in our next blog post we'll look at ways that you can increase your site load speeds.