Your website’s speed can make or break your business. If the pages of your website routinely take more than two seconds to load, you could be losing out on potential customers.
Most users will click away from a slow-to-load website or will form a bad impression of that business.
A quick way to test your website’s speed is to access it using various devices and browsers. If your website loads in under two seconds on most devices and browsers, great! But if you notice that your site is struggling to load on multiple devices, that could be a sign that something is going on with your site.
If you notice your website is loading slowly, act quickly! The longer you wait to solve the problem, the more website traffic you’re missing out on. From web host problems to bad patches of code, here are some reasons why your website might be slow.
Too many advertisements
Advertisements are great if you’re trying to monetize your website, but they’re not so great for your website speed. Too many advertisements across your website mean that your website is constantly receiving HTTP requests, which could overload your website and make it slow. Try to use advertisements strategically on your site. Also, remember to avoid using advertisements that run on Flash on your website! Flash content is hard to load, plus there are also security concerns regarding Flash, which could put your website at risk of hacking and malware.
Problems with coding
Sometimes, unclean coding can cause websites to slow down. Not to mention, unclean coding also lowers your SEO! Just because your code is working on your website doesn’t mean it is written correctly. Signs of messy coding include white space, unnecessary commands, and inline styling. If you’re not familiar with code, you could hire someone with web design knowledge to help you clean your coding up. There are also online tools that can help you clean your stylesheets if you feel comfortable with cleaning the code yourself.
Media files aren’t optimized
Large media files, such as videos and images, need to be optimized and reduced because high-quality media that isn’t will require a large amount of bandwidth to load. And the more bandwidth that is used loading these media files, the slower your website will be! Some web hosts automatically optimize large media files. If your web host doesn’t, make sure to look into best practices in terms of uploading images to your website; you’ll need to reduce the file size of the media before it is used.
Caching issues
If you’re not using caching techniques on your website, you could be unintentionally slowing your website down. Every time someone loads your website, data is transferred. However, when you use caching, those data points are stored, and the next time that content is loaded, it gets pulled from the cached memory. This process can significantly reduce loading speeds on your website. HTTP and images are among the parts of your website that can be cached. Most hosts offer built-in caching, so go see what your host has to offer.
Outgrown web host
If you’ve started to receive more traffic on your website, there is a possibility that your current web host doesn’t have enough bandwidth to meet your current needs. However, before you switch web hosts, you should check to see if your current web host offers a package with more bandwidth. Most hosts will offer multiple packages, though packages with more bandwidth will often cost a bit more. However, if all you need to do is upgrade your current package, you will quickly start seeing faster website speeds.
Web host is bad
Other times, your web host might just be a bad fit overall. If you’ve looked into other reasons why your website might be slow and you don’t think you’re having a problem with your bandwidth, it could be time to change web hosts. You can use a website such as MangoMatter to look into other potential web hosts. Always consider several web hosts and read online reviews before settling on a new web host. Research now can prevent you from a headache (and slow website speeds) later.
Final thoughts
If your website is slow to load, start figuring out why! A slow-loading website isn’t just an annoyance, it could also be harming your business. Not to mention, optimizing your website’s speed could also improve your SEO, allowing you to rank higher on Google and therefore start receiving even more organic traffic!