Does your website take a long time to load? Did you know that it can affect your Google Ranking? 53% of people says that they will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. That means that if you have a slow website you are losing business. You may have the greatest website design and user experience, but if you have not optimized the page load speed of your website then your site will fail.
Causes of a slow website
Unoptimized Images – If your website has a lot of images that are not optimized then it will slow down your website dramatically. Oversized images can make the browser work harder and longer to load the larger images. Always make sure that you are not adding oversized images into your website. If you are using WordPress for your site I recommend using Shortpixel to reduce the file size of your images.
Bulky Files – Large files such as images, flash content, and advertisements can become large files if they are not optimized for display on a website. The larger the file the longer it will take to download on your site. Avoid image files such as TIFF and BMP, use JPG and PNG files for images.
Too Many Plug Ins – Your site may have to many plug ins installed which can slow down your site and also make you more susceptible to security risks. If you have plug ins that you are not using deactivate them and delete them.
Excessive HTTP Requests – Having a bunch of javascript, css, and image files can lead to too many HTTP requests. When someone visits your page the browser has to perform several requests to load these files, this can lead to slow page loads. Reducing the number of files on each page can help, also WordPress has many plug ins such as Autoptimize that can help minify your css and javascript files the user has to download.
Bad Hosting – Your slow website may not be all your fault if you have a bad hosting company. This is one of those “you get what you pay for” things, if you have done all you can to speed up your site then you may need to switch hosts to help out your speed.
Cache is not enabled – When your website is not cached, your server saves web pages and other internet pages temporary. Using a cache plug in such as wp super cache you are able to cache a bunch of things such as HTTP, images and database queries. Caching will drastically improve the performance of your website.
Speed Testing Tools
There are various testing tools that you can use to find out what is slowing down your website and what is doing well.
Google Page Speed Insights
Pingdom Website Speed Test
Yslow
Do you need help making your website faster? You may need a website audit to help you find out what your problems are. Contact me to find out how to speed up your website.
