Read this sentence aloud…
It takes two seconds to lose customers…
So what’s the problem?
In the time you’ve taken to read that sentence, a slow-loading website has lost another potential client.
Plus, the website owners will be lucky if that person tries to click onto it ever again! Users told researchers they won’t go back to sites that take more than four seconds to upload.
The average load speed people expect is between one and two seconds. In fact, research shows that a load speed over two seconds will lose 87% of traffic.
A slow-loading website is a real bugbear for many people, and it’s one of the top ways to lose your potential customers.
Did you know that 67% of UK consumers said slow loading times are the main reason they would abandon an online purchase?
So this problem is big! It affects your user experience – badly!
It also adversely impacts your Google ranking. Page loading speed is an important factor in deciding where your website will sit in search engine results.
Google uses a variety of technical metrics to determine that page speed, including the time it takes for the most important content to load and how stable the pages are when they load. It takes real-life data from users to feed into the metrics.
It’s time to fix the problem…So, what can you do to improve loading speed?
- Optimise your images – Large images cause delays to page loading. For a fast-loading page, ensure the images will take up less than 500KB of space.
- Remove unnecessary meta tags and meta content – These are html code items meant to be read by search engine crawlers so they can decide how relevant your website is to the search performed. Badly targeted html tags and meta content can confuse search engines and indirectly lead to slow load times.
- Use JavaScript and CSS sparingly – These programming languages allow interactive features to be added to websites but they are resource heavy when it comes to page loading. They slow things down.
- Minimise white space and line returns – Removing these items makes the coded files smaller and easier for search engines to open and read.
- Check your hosting – Is it in a busy shared server prone to traffic spikes? That could lead to slow speeds or even some downtime.
- Check your page caching set up – Has it been disabled? Implementing it can improve load speed but it can also hamper it if there is outdated information or inconsistencies with other parts of your site. It’s worth getting a professional to check this.
- Check your plugins – Are they poorly coded? Some can be and that can hit page loading speed and confuse search engines. It’s worth getting a website developer to check this for you.
Need to get to the root of the problem? I have a website audit call that will give you the answers you need and a clear plan for how to fix it. Take a look: Site Audit – Web Wisdom
Let’s talk!