My Website Page Loads So Slow

My Website Page Loads So Slow

Here are some tasks you can perform on your website that will speed up the page load time.

A slow-loading webpage can be a major detriment for your business by disrupting the critical flow of customers. Every day more and more businesses are coming online and taking advantage of the endless opportunity that the internet has to offer them. Your competitors in the online space are ever-increasing, and it is important to understand that as this proliferation continues, there are certain fundamental aspects of your website that will matter. When it comes to making sure the branding captures your customers, there are few more important factors than speed. Great design, branding, and management can get you pretty far in the online marketing space and are certainly necessary to be successful. However, speed can often be the deciding factor at the outset. Slow load times can and will negate any work you have done in other areas if your web page simply does not load fast enough. The statistics from user data are clear when they show how easily a potential customer will move on to a competitor’s website if there is even a slight delay in the loading of a webpage. Of all the variables that matter to a customer, speed is the one that is most often associated with success in the online marketing space. Simply put, speed will make or break your website. So what is there to do when you have reports of your page loads slowing? Plenty, because of how important this trait is for your website, most professionals will have varying solutions for this problem.

There are a few tasks that you can perform on your website that will most definitely help with any speed problems your users might be experiencing. The first, and one of the more common ones, is the optimization of pictures. Images and pictures make up a good portion of your site’s load, so making sure these are optimized is important. But what exactly does optimizing a picture mean? Essentially all the photos stored on your website have a file size, and the speed at which they load is determined by this size. Optimization means to make that file as small as possible while still keeping the picture quality. In addition, to file size picture size is also important. If your blog is 900px, make sure that your image fits that template and doesn’t have to be automatically resized every time. Some platforms like WordPress also have plugins specifically designed to do this for you and can be worth your time if you have a lot of relevant pictures you are putting in front of your customers. There are also other tools you can use to help optimize your images, including things that will convert your picture file into the smallest possible file size without losing the integrity of the resolution.

Optimization can extend further than pictures, though. The code that makes up a website can also be tuned for higher speeds. As time goes on and changes and edits mount on your website, the code can tend to get cluttered. Website builders, content management systems, and customizations will all add to the unnecessary lines of code that your website tries to process as it loads. This will inevitably lead to slower load times. The best way of combating this is keeping up with your code either manually or through the use of similar optimization tools that you would find for picture optimization. Manual fixing comes down to having your coder go the extra mile when implementing changes and making sure that it is as condensed as possible. Tools like Google’s Page speed insights chrome extension or WordPress’s minify can help achieve these goals as well.

The final topics worth exploring when it comes to page speed has to do with the underlying structure your website relies on. Websites are built using servers that call and send data to users requesting to see the website. The network of servers that your website relies on will determine its speed, where these networks are located matters a lot when it comes to speed. So, if you have a target market in mind in one part of the world is important to have an understanding of how physically close to that target your servers are. The further away from the servers, the longer the load time. The best way to improve speed in this area is to have a robust CDN or content delivery network. This simply means a network of servers placed in strategic locations that suit your needs. The more access points to the main servers, the faster a website will load. A larger, more robust network means faster and more professional load times. Achieving faster speeds for your website is fairly straight forward once you know what you’re looking to accomplish. All the tools and ideas discussed here can help professional or amateur website managers, no matter the situation.