Website speed is a discussion that has dominated website creation circles in recent times and for good reason too! We live in a period where anyone looking to create a website must have the ability to cater for the impatience of the average website visitor. This means ensuring that the website loads with 2-3 seconds. This may seem a very short time but in web browsing terms, it is not. Open a webpage and keep tabs on the time. You will become impatient if it doesn’t load in that time frame! For perspective, the average web user “scans” a 500-word content in 5 seconds to decide if it is worth reading or not. Throw in the fact that there are thousands of pages that have something similar to your content and you will understand why page speed is very important.
Why Website Speed is very important?
Creating a webpage that takes more time than normal to load in full must be avoided in this day and age. Here is why.
Faster loading websites is good for all parties.
Site visitors love it when a link opens fast enough. This also has the ability to affect the decision of whether to buy from your website or not. There is compelling evidence to show that the chance of a customer abandoning your page is very high when pages take too long to complete loading. Regardless of the type of website you create (online builder, WordPress, Dreamweaver), the loading speed has the ability to sabotage your efforts and also influence how objectives are achieved.
Google has talked about how delaying page speed is able to affect searches. If they are saying something about it, you should listen. They say high speed websites ensure higher visitor engagement, higher retention and ultimately, conversions.
It is good for your Rankings
Over the past four years, Google has been taking into consideration site response time and loading speed to determine where websites are placed in their algorithm. Only a few websites may have benefited from this thus far, but it is in your best interest to ensure you are among this select few by doing all you can to improve loading speed.
How can you improve loading speed?
The first step is to talk to a web designer if you didn’t create it yourself and ask that your website be made faster. You can also run a Google PageSpeed test and work off its suggestions. Take a look at the speed by opening your website in different devices and browsers using different internet carriers. Most of the time that 200 miilisecond differences in load speed may be down to internet providers. The key is to ensure that other sites do not open faster than your website on the same internet service.
Read: Host Images on Subdomain for Better Speed
After your website design has been tweaked well enough to reduce its impact on website speed, you can further increase your website speed by looking at the content you upload. If you have too many heavy images embedded in your content, website speed will suffer. Consider reducing the size of the images and the number of multimedia files you have on every page. Texts and fonts should also be analysed for ambiguity.
Test Your Web Developer Online Before HiringCompress your files. Cache your site. Reduce HTTP requests and clean up your code. These measures are guaranteed to make your website load faster than before; even if only by fractions in some cases.
In conclusion, website speed is very important. If you want to avoid losing your customers to rivals and if you also want to tap into word-of-mouth advertising, get your site fast.
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