Wondering what is it you are missing that’s causing your web page to rank lower in the search engines? Why people are leaving your website? Have you ever wonder why your website is slow to load? In this post, we are going to address the major reasons of slow loading website and how you can fix it before it’s too late.
When your website loads slowly, it will not only give users a bad experience, but also your ranking in search engines will be lowered. The speed of a website is one of the main factors that can affect your business in many ways. Research shows that visitors expect your page to load in two seconds or less. If your page fails to load in less than three seconds, nearly 50% of people will leave the page.
The best part is that if your website is slow to load, you can fix it by ensuring a few things and for that, you do not need to put a lot of effort. But first, you need to know what you are looking for and how much work to do on your site. You can consult top web development company to fix the slow website loading.
How Long Does A Website Take To Load?
So, you have checked the loading speed of your website and now want to know what the ideal page load time is. According to Google, a good website takes no more than three seconds to load. However, according to recent data, it took almost 7 seconds for most websites (that is, more than 70% of the total) to load the content above the fold. In addition, data shows that none of these sites, regardless of their industry, are even close to loading within three seconds. If you can get your website close to the ideal load time (three seconds), you will be already ahead of the competition.
Given below are some different tips to fix slow website loading speed and increase your conversion rate.
- Optimize Media Files
If your site has tons of images or other media files that aren’t optimized, then this will affect your site’s loading speed. There are different ways you can optimize your images to load faster. The easiest solution to this problem is practicing optimization. To load your website faster than before, compress the size of images, videos, and other media on your webpage.
You can either use a separate tool to compress the media files on your page or can use WordPress’s plugins like Smush for compressing and optimizing images. Moreover, you can embed videos from other platforms like YouTube, instead of adding it to your pages directly.
You can contact the best web design and development company to get website speed optimization services.
- Add CDN to your Website
Another way to reduce the loading time of your website is by adding CDN to your website. CDN is very effective, especially when you have customers all over the world. The loading speed of the website also depends on the fact that where your website server is located. If users load your website from a location far away from where your site’s files are stored, the site will eventually take longer than usual.
The role of CDN is to distribute your website files on a global server network. This way, your site will connect to the nearest server and load faster. The main providers of CDN include StackPath, CloudFare, Google Cloud CDN, etc.
- Render Blocking JavaScript
JavaScript is used to build websites more interactive and convenient website for users. This helps increase the functionality of the page, but if the page is not optimized in a proper way, it can also cause the website to respond slowly.
When you load a website, the browser loads any JavaScript files that come in its path, instead of loading the website first, which results in a render-block. This prevents the page from loading as quickly as possible and hence making it slow.
To fix render-blocking JavaScript, you should follow the below steps:
- Remove any unnecessary JavaScript files and use only inline JavaScript.
- Asynchronous loading will help you lower the website loading time. This way you can load the JavaScript code separately and parallel to the rest of the page.
- When the rest of the page is loaded, load JavaScript.
By following these practices, you can prevent render-blocking JavaScript and your web-page will load quickly.
- Too Many Ads Can Kill Your Website
Too many ads mean too many HTTP requests, which can seriously affect the performance of your website. Not only that, it can sometimes make your website unresponsive. The primary solution to this problem is to use advertising only where it is necessary. There is no point in overloading you website with too many ads, if it is only going to cost you performance.
Limit the use of ads on your website, because this will not only improve the slow loading of your website but also improve the user experience and the click-through rates of your advertisements.
- Minify Your Code
The more code a user’s web browser needs to load, the longer it will take for your website to be visible. If your code is too “bulky” or contains unnecessary characters, spaces, comments, and line breaks, your site may be slower. In response, you can “minify” that code by removing the elements or unnecessary components.
Doing this will also improve its SEO ranking as well as help you reduce the loading time of your website.
There are two popular plugins to perform this task.
- Autoptimize
In addition to inlining CSS and optimizing JavaScript files, Autoptimize minifies code. It also integrates well with WP Super Cache.
- Fast Velocity Minify
It merges CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the number of requests needed for browsers to load your pages. It also minifies your code.If your website takes 5 seconds to load then you need to know the reason behind it. To fix these issues, hire a professional web development company and also get website design services.
