Website load speed is vital for users as well as search engines, thus performance optimization comes into play. As for the users, a slow website may be a deal breaker, with a slow loading website may completely throw timeout when receiving huge traffic, for the search engines also, speed is the key. Consider a situation where one search engine results open slow, you navigate to one website and it takes forever to open and then you go back to search results and open second listing and it throws timeout error, and then you try a different search engine and it only lists website that load super fast even on the slowest internet connection.
Would you consider using the search engine that lists website that are super slow? Definitely, the answer is no. It has not been easy ride for google as well, it had tough competition from Bing (once MSN) and Yahoo, but with it focus on user satisfaction and user oriented results, it is now a king. Well, website speed may not be everything but is one of the major factors considered for search engine positioning. Also, you would not want your potential client to navigate away just because the website is crawling/loading at snail speed.
At Zycoon Media, we do care about you and your business. Each website we develop is hand-coded for optimal performance.