There is nothing worse than clicking on a website URL and it taking forever to load everything. Sometimes you question your WiFi connection, other times the site optimization is to blame. Those extra seconds of wait time can be a deciding factor for your website visitors to either wait it out or click over to a different website altogether. 

Don’t risk losing website traffic just because your site is slow! Take time to fix your site speed with these tips and determine what factors are slowing your website load time down.

Before we get too deep into the tips, you need to determine a site speed you want to achieve. Best practice is anywhere between 3-4 seconds. If users have to spend more than about 7 seconds waiting on your website to load, it’s a pretty good bet they are going to get impatient and head elsewhere. Depending on how many images or other elements you have on your webpages, you may need to increase this time just a little bit, but under 4 seconds is an optimal site speed. 

Start by checking your site speed

Use a website such as Pingdom Tools to check your initial site speed. You may be already satisfied with this number, but there is always room for improvement. Record this first number for reference. 

Determine what is weighing down your load time

There are a few different factors that could contribute to your slower loading time. Review this list to see which ones could be the culprit for your site. 

Potential causes of a slow site:

• Bad website hosting: The platform you are hosting your site on could be a huge contributing factor.

• Page size: You may have multiple images or large files struggling to load at a quicker speed. Or maybe you are trying to serve too much content on one page and need to break it up into multiple, smaller pages.

• Image files: From file sizes to file types, this can be a factor to keep an eye on. This is one of the top causes for slow load times.

• Wordpress Plugins and external scripts: If your website is hosted on Wordpress, part of the problem could be the number of plugins you have on your website. All of those plugin files have to load before your site content, so that leads to a long wait. And if you have multiple scripts from Google Analytics, Facebook, and other social media and 3rd party platforms, it can add to your website’s load time.

Ways to fix these common problems

Bad website hosting

Your hosting server plays an important and main role in your optimization process. Even if you try these other methods first, it won’t really matter because your website host/server is the main component to everything.

During your site speed test, find out the time it takes for your site to start loading the assets of your site or time to the first byte of data. A quality server can get to TTFB in just under 200 milliseconds.

When it comes to servers, you get what you pay for, so you may potentially need to upgrade depending on your overall site’s performance. We highly recommend going with a managed Wordpress plan with a hosting company like Flywheel if you are working with Wordpress. If you are on a fully-managed platform like Squarespace or Shopify you won’t have much control over this factor, however if you are noticing lag time we recommend reaching out to their support and seeing if there is an issue on the specific server your site is being served from.

Page sizes

The size of your page is a huge factor when it comes to your loading time and how quickly data can appear and visitors can interact with your page. 

Everything on your page is a part of the total page size. From images to text, video files, etc. - this is all a part of the size. 

A page with a ton of content on it will equal slower load times, which means visitors will have to take time to wait for everything to load. Consider this as a major factor when designing your website or updating its content for optimization. 

Image Files

While images can be a huge part of your site style and overall website, they can be a big one to watch out for with your site optimization. The good news here is that fixing your images for a faster site can be pretty easy. Here are some quick tips specifically for your website images. 

• Keep file dimensions on the smaller side. There is no reason for your image width to be larger than 2500px, and that’s really only necessary for full-screen imagery.

• Make sure your photos are the right file type. Traditional images should be JPEGs, while PNGs should be reserved for files that are more graphics/illustration driven. Unless you need a transparent background, a traditional photo/image should almost never be a .png (the file sizes are much larger).

• Optimize your images for your website by the file size. Try out a website like https://imagecompressor.com or tinyjpg.com to compress your images properly. A good rule of thumb is to keep your file sizes under 600-800KB and optimally under 350KB. Having professional photography taken? Request that your photographer provide web-ready imagery in addition to the typical high-quality files they will provide which are not suitable for websites.  

Wordpress Plugins

If your website isn’t hosted on WordPress, you can skip over this part, but if you are a Wordpress user, take note. Perform a regular site audit, preferably quarterly, uninstalling plugins that you aren’t using anymore or aren’t essential. And be sure to keep your plugins regularly updated (see also: update them weekly) to avoid any potential security vulnerabilities or conflicts. Always try to avoid overloading your site with plugins and look for alternative options for needed functionality if possible. 

Take some time this week or get a date on the schedule to assess your website and optimize the main reasons your site may be chugging along and sending visitors away! Have questions? Reach out to us below and let’s chat about how we can help!

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