My biggest Forex launch in 6 years: What's better, fast-loading vs fancy site?

I would go with fast not fancy. Loading speed is super important. If a site takes to long to load, I click out of it.

I'm guessing your fancy site is completely optimized and it is still at 7 seconds?
I would agree with cyberzolo. I will click out of a website that takes longer than 5 seconds to load. I do content sites and not selling though, so I can' really comment on that. Maybe it is different when the incoming is shopping for what you are offering.

Post the two sites so we can see. Without seeing them, I'd think that fast is superior over flashy.

I would go with the fancy version. Have you optimized all the images etc? Do you have W3 Total cache plugin installed? Try gtmetrix.com to analyze your site to make it quicker

Ken I'll break it down for you a bit.

If you're planning on massive amounts of traffic:
1. Get an outsourcer to take that badass WP template and turn it into an optimized for speed html template
- This will do a few things for you including limiting your hosting/server loads for php calls, limiting attacks from hackers on WP vulnerabilities, decrease load speeds drastically, keep the high end "fancy" look you're going for but without the downside.

If you're planning on getting traffic on a more steady basis but with less bursts:
1. Use WP
- This allows you to make changes on the fly if you're not familiar with html
- Retargetting your advertising becomes much easier with various plugins if you're not familiar how to retarget your visitors using html
- Various other plugins that may help conversions are also available (live chat for example)

Something you may not have considered is this. Going the opposite direction of all the other forex product launches. Keeping it long form sales copy, focusing on the copy and not the graphics, with a proper follow up and/or including a professionally written VSL somewhere in there. Think about it as this may be something that could set you apart from the noise of that crowd and/or convert better for you.

If you want to chat about any of the above, just hit me up. Otherwise, I hope the info has been helpful.

I would recommend going for the fancy site layout mainly due to the fact that it can increase conversions. Most people don't care about site speed as long as it is is a decent loading time.

Thanks all, good points... we're going with the "fast as default", with link to fancy at the top. so the default is fast html for new visitors, with link to mobile/fancy/premium wp version at top for slower connections ...

The site has 12+ videos on it (dvd previews), and right Anne, even W3/gtmetrix optimized it's still at 7 seconds; I'm a ninja coder, lol, main thing is embedded videos + wp even on my VPN server is 7 seconds; the html is 3 secs on gtmetrix so we're going with that. Good point re page-optimizing w/gtmetrix/W3 tweaks, tested/tweaked for 2 hours, got it from 12 secs to 7, agree though 3-5 secs should be max pageload time.

and right, I'm my industry's top VSL producer/copywriter, which is how this site is designed; it'll do 6-7 figures. i make the world's top-selling vsls, for my own biz, since 2001.

it's so dang exhausting, exhilirating and profitable doing massive launches, this is my biggest in 6 years... months of 12+ hour workload days, it'll do well.

fwiw i do internal-only launches year one, then expand to include selected jv partners year 2, then open to affs year 3; since I have a big list I work that first, then expand to include others after working my own leads

thx for the insights; good points from you all

gotta love that 'launch buzz', best feeling ever in IM, esp. w/rockstar quality products/great customers

-k

From a conversion point of view, you lose something like 7% of customers for every second your site spends loading. So fast > fancy.