Have you ever gone on a website and then clicked off because it was so slow? It’s an experience many of us have had. As a user, it can be frustrating but as a company or a brand, it can be more than frustrating: it can lose you serious money.
Google Chrome will now warn you if you are about to click on a slow loading website. You could lose even more revenue.
Luckily, a slow website is easily fixed. Here is why webpages load slowly.
1. Large Files
A large file can be one of the biggest reasons behind a slow website. It is important that if you include lots of photos on your site that you make sure they are compressed and that the image displayed on your site is small.
It is ok to have a high-resolution image but only if you right-click and want to see the full-size image.
Don’t include videos on your site as these take up lots of space, particularly HD or 4K video. One way around this is to host the videos on a platform like Youtube and include a link to them on your website.
You could even substitute pictures with your Instagram feed running down the side of your website.
2. Lack of Cache
Cacheing is when a browser remembers a website and stores it so that it is quicker to access the next you visit. It’s a good feature for reoccurring visitors and it rewards reoccurring customers.
But if it isn’t done right it can slow down your website. Be sure to look out for some plugins or tools online that can help fix these problems for you.
This is one of the biggest door and hardware website improvements you can make.
3. Plugins
Plugins are great. They allow your website to do a host of other things like display videos, a Twitter feed, your Instagram accounts and even galleries of images that tick over automatically.
But if you try to craft the perfect website with every single plugin you can think of it can slow it down. You are asking the website to load too much at once.
Furthermore, plugins can slow down or stop the cacheing process that allows the website to load faster for regular visitors.
Be sure to ask yourself if you need all of the plugins. Can you remove some and see if other solutions can enable you to display the information you need to on your website?
No Website Is Better Than a Slow Website
A slow website is a wasted effort. In today’s fast-moving modern world, a customer is not going to wait for the website to load and is going to click off. Many people feel the web itself, even when it runs properly, is too slow anyway.
To generate the number of hits you want, ensure that you haven’t used too many plugins, that file sizes are not too big and that cacheing works properly.
If you are interested in reading more about why webpages load slowly and how to fix a website loading slowly be sure to check out the rest of our site.