When people look at your business website, how fast does it load on their computer, tablet or mobile phone? Why is it important for your site to load quickly? Here we take a look at the main reasons why your website needs to be quick, and what you can do to make your website load faster.
So why is website loading time important?
Research has shown that if your site takes longer than 4 seconds to load, people can become impatient and look elsewhere. As technology improves and internet connection speeds increase the feeling amongst web users is that even 4 seconds is getting to be too long!
There are also Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) considerations to think about. One of the factors that search engines, such as Google , take into account is how fast a website loads. A slow site is less likely to do well in the page rankings.
How do I make my website load faster?
First, invest in some good quality hosting for your website. Check the service levels and equipment available before making a decision, the cheapest option is not always the most effective choice. Have a look at other sites on the same hosting package. How do they perform?
Secondly, make sure your pictures are set up properly. This will mean checking their display dimensions when compared to their actual dimensions. Similarly, using an effective picture format, such as JPG or PNG, means that the images loading time will be reduced. Something else you can check is if your website uses Gzip – or similar – to enable smooth, fast delivery of your content to your website visitor. If not, then it’s certainly worth thinking about.
Thirdly, ensure that your website is efficiently coded. Having the “back end” of your website operating effectively is key to getting a good load time. Even some platforms such as WordPress can be optimised by tweaking the background code.
To get an idea of how well your current website performs when loading try using the Google PageSpeed Insights
If you’d like us to review your website with you and help you to get it “up to speed” then get in touch or pop into our office in Stafford and we’ll be happy to help.