Slow Internet will be the death of me. At least that’s what it feels like most times. I hate it when I load a page and there is a huge delay in the content loading. If you happen to make money from your website such delays could be costing you money and traffic.
A study by Akamai found that:
• 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
• 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
• 52% of online shoppers say quick page loads are important for their loyalty to a site.
This might be true or not. Putting a time frame on how long a website loads is hard and unnecessary. There are many factors to consider including where the site is being loaded from and your machine’s processing capabilities. But what is important is that a website shouldn’t take too long, for me that would be about 1-2 minutes, to load.
Using smaller images can work well in making your site load faster. Before you upload an image use an editing software to optimize it. Crop out all the unnecessary bits of the image and reduce it’s size. For example; a 3MB picture is a little bit too large and may slow down your website. Also remove any comments that are on the image and choose the right format. JPEG is usually the ideal image to use.
You can also speed up your website by using a CDN (content Delivery Network. CDN’s are distributed servers located in several regions that use a number of algorithms to replicate and store your most popular content in several location. When a user requests your content, it is quickly fetched from one of the servers. The server to fetch from is automatically selected based on number of hops, bandwidth and how busy that location is. A website that has employed the use of CDN’s is able to load much faster.
Sometimes a website’s speed can be increased by upgrading the server or switching web hosting companies. When a server is overloaded, fetching data takes much longer and websites load much slower. Your webhost should upgrade the servers to increase their working speed. If they are unable to do so, switching hosts may be recommended.
Too many plugins can also slow down your website. Plugins are processes and each process takes time to execute . Plugins also occupy processing resources of your device. install only necessary plugins to avoid slowing down your website.
These are just a few ways you can speed up your website. Do you know of any more methods? Share with us your tips