5 Key Reasons For Slow Loading Websites
- April 14, 2022
- 8:19 am
- No Comments
Slow loading websites is one of the main reasons why people leave a website before it’s even loading and a sure-fire way to kill any conversion rates for your business. In a world that’s constantly busy and not to mention how easily accessible more content is if they can’t get their hands on yours.
Every website needs to be optimized to run and load quickly for the user, not focusing on it is a recipe for disaster. Whether they are browsing on their desktop or looking on their mobile device it needs to be accessible for all devices! In order to stop our websites from running slow, you must first know how to optimize them correctly.
If you want to test your current website speed to see if it needs improvement you can use the PageSpeed Insight tool which is free by Google to check how your page is currently running on mobile and desktop.
You should already have an idea if your website is currently running low by yourself if you’ve tried to click on it, if you feel it could be improved then begin working on it today. There are many moving parts in web design that you need to get right when creating a website and any good web designer should be able to create a site that not only looks good but runs quick.
Here’s Five Key Reasons For Slow Loading Websites…
Large Image Files
One of the main reasons behind website slowness is that your image sizes are too large. Having images that are too high-resolution can result in a lot of bandwidth being used when loading. If you upload an image that is large then scaling them down can cause your site to be increased leading to a slower loading time for the user.
Regardless of what website builder you used to create your site, this stands true. JPEG pictures will be smaller in size compared to your PNG and GIF files, if you are using JPEG pictures for your website it will naturally be quicker compared to using other image formats.
Be sure to always check your image sizes before you upload, if it’s anything above 1MB then it’s important you begin resizing it down to speed up your website.
Bad Server Performance
When someone clicks on your website, whatever browser the user is on will ping the server asking for data on running your site. If your server isn’t up to standard, it will take longer to load. Even if you’ve optimized your website correctly, it’s still going to be slow once someone tries to access it.
The reason for this? It will be your hosting provider, having a cheaper web host to run your site is often a bad move due to them using shared servers. This means your website will be sharing space with other websites and the resources that come with it.
The best way to stop your site from suffering from poor server speed times? Move hosting to another provider.
Your Running Too Many Ads
You’ve noticed a massive increase of visitors to your website on a monthly basis, you think to yourself I could be making money from this and why shouldn’t you after all you’ve managed to drive this much traffic to your website.
A big way some websites make their money is through monetizing their website with ads but running too many of them can hurt the user experience on your site resulting in a decrease in traffic and possibly future income. The fact your website is now running more slowly due to ads is the addition of HTTP requests which need additional processing time.
Limiting the amount of advertisements that you run on your website can it get back running quick and useable again, not to mention if you are carefully placing your ads to focus on a better user experience for your visitor, there’s a high chance that your click through rates will be much better as well for your ads.
Too Many HTTP Requests
When a person decides to click on your website, the browser that they are on will perform several requests so it can load the files on your site. Creating too many requests from too much JavaScript, CSS and a large amount of images will lead to a slower site speed.
To stop this from happening, limit the amount of files that need to be loaded on your web page. Minify down whatever CSS and JavaScript files that a potential user will have to download when trying to access your website.
No Cache Techniques
If you haven’t heard of caching techniques then there’s no need to worry, we will run through everything you need to know. Caching is when browsers will store frequently used data inside its cached memory. This means the next time your site is visited, the browser doesn’t have to go through the process of reloading all your data all over again.
Having faster data retrieval, this will increase the speed at what your website functions at. Without using any caching techniques, your website won’t have to load all the files again, every time someone visits. This will damage the user experience on your site and should be looked at if you want to improve your site.
Conclusion
Having a speedy website shouldn’t be a luxury in the online world, it should be a necessity. If you have a slow website there is possibly no positives to the situation, you will lose people who were interested enough to click on your site, your site won’t be favored in the Google ranking system and if you run a business, other competitors with quicker websites will end up converting more leaving you soon behind.
It can be a tricky place to be in if you’ve had no experience in dealing with how websites work and how to improve them. Here at The Wolf Of The Web we help ambitious business owners establish their presence in the online world by building bespoke tailored sites that are built to be shown on Google and drive up conversion rates for increased revenue.