Is your Website Slow?
A lot has been discussed about Google UX (User Experience), a contributor that led google to making UX a big issue was, frustration by user who experience slow and clunky websites.
Google will penalise websites in ranking should page load be show.
So…. What can you do to help your website load faster?
Improve your Website Speed
It should be noted that there are many factors that can contribute to a slow website. However, the following basic tips could assist you to improve performance.
Are your Images Optimised
This is the first port of call in speeding up your website. All images need to be optermised for performance. Using Large images dramatically increases the time it takes to load the page, especially if your user is on mobile device (mobile devices account for the largest amount of online users)
The good news is that there are several online tools available to help you optimise image sizes.
These tools will compress the images without quality loss which will massively increase image load speed.
Examples of Image compression tools are – TinyPNG – CompressNOW
If your website runs on a WordPress platform, Plugins are available to compress images (Smush for example)
Redundant Code
If your website has been online for length of time, you may have made many alterations along the way and not removed any code that is no longer used. Redundant code slows down your websites loading time.
Poor Hosting
Hosting plays a major part in your website’s performance. Low quality hosing can results in downtime, slow page loads and a multitude of other performance issues.
It pays to always ensure your hosting ensures quality servers, support and guaranteed uptime.
Caching Issues
Caching occurs when data, images and webpages are stored temporally to make it quicker to load. If your website has no facility for caching, it has to load from scratch which again which greatly impedes load speed.
Many content management systems (WordPress etc) provide plugins to manage caching for you.
Summary
Its worth spending time to address why your website is slow and check the above items to investigate possible causes. In addition its worth checking the above every now and again to ensure optimum performance.
Here at Inline Data we are always available should you need assistance or advise.
