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Website responsiveness is one of the most important factors determining the success of your site. A fast website will attract visitors, get conversions and rank highly on Google. A slow site will lose customers, be frustrating to use and generally undermine your business.
But what causes your site to be so slow? And is there anything you can do about it?
Here we’re going to investigate why your website might be slow. Then we’ll discuss actionable ways you can improve your site. Let’s get started.
Stop Using Text Graphics
A lot of websites are still using images to display text. This dramatically increases the data transfer between the client and the host. And as a result, customers are confronted with a slow-loading website, especially if they have a slow connection. Using images is a good idea. But the times you use images should be rationed to when they will have the most bang-for-your-byte. Text is not a good use of your precious bandwidth resources. So stick to regular HTML fonts instead.
You’ve Got A Problem With File Requests
How long it takes to load a web page on your site depends on a couple of things. It depends on the size of the files describing all the elements on your page. And it depends on the number of different requests for all those files. Let’s say that you’ve got a page with the following elements. You’ve got your company logo, some buttons, a couple of pictures, text and social media icons. Each of those individual elements requires data to be transferred. And each of those elements must respond to a request by the client for them to load. If you’ve got less than ten elements on a page, you’re probably going to be fine. But if you’ve got hundreds of elements, that could be a problem. File requests, or RTTs, can queue up on the server on which your website is hosted. And when that happens, the whole process of page retrieval can be slowed dramatically.
The problem is compounded when lots of people access your site altogether. 50 people on a page with 100 elements generates 5,000 file requests which all have to be processed by a single server.
You’ve Got An Outdated CMS
There’s a reason why sites like https://lightboxdigital.co.uk/ talk about the importance of CMS. Content management is the new frontline in marketing. But many users of platforms like WordPress, don’t upgrade to the newest versions. Newer versions tend to have fewer problems than older versions. And they’re likely to be faster and more user-friendly. That means that it’s important that businesses regularly update their CMS software to the latest version.
Your Site Has A Load Of Unnecessary Redirects
A lot of businesses set up redirects. They might have moved site. Or they might have a page that is no longer in use. Redirects might seem like a very good idea. But they’re a surefire way to increase load times and ruin the user experience. Redirects are essentially the same as loading a page twice. Sometimes you might have a compelling reason to do it. But otherwise, you’re usually just wasting your customers’ time. There’s more info on this at https://www.quora.com.
Your Server Is Located On Another Continent
If you’ve ever watched a news reporter speaking from a different country, you’ll have noticed something: there’s a delay. The delay is caused by the distance between the two locations. It takes time to send messages from one side of the planet to the other. The same happens when a customer tries to talk to your website. If the server is in the same city, they’ll experience a quick connection. If it’s halfway around the world, it’ll seem slow. It’s worth pointing out that it doesn’t matter how good the server itself is. Its speed is limited by the laws of physics.
Your Code Is Not Optimised
Google has over 2 billion lines of code to make its services run. Facebook has more than 100 million. The large Hadron Collider has about 50 million. Dense code is the enemy of speed, especially for small businesses. You might not realise it, but there’s an enormous amount of code behind the scenes of your website doing all of the legwork. If that code is easily understood by the server, then your site should be fine and easily displayed. But if that code is jumbled and incoherent, it could take a while for the server to fetch it. If that happens, and the site is clogged, the user experience will suffer. And you don’t want that.
