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A slow-loading website will eventually kill your business

by WF- Enzo Administrator
17 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
Don't you just hate it when the website you wanna visit just takes eons to load? And no, this isn't because your ISP sucks - it's really because that website has content that's poorly optimised. Here are key things to consider.

Image optimisation

Oversized images can be a major culprit, and that's because your website may be sprawled with, say, 3-4 images which are more than 15MB. You can save precious loading seconds by compressing them before uploading to your site, and you can do this by compressing your images using Photoshop (Save for Web option), or using PNG as file format for lossless image compression.

A fast-loading site is good for SEO

Google prefers fast-loading website, which then is a factor in page rankings. The more time a user spends on your website, the more relevant your website is to the user, which means more conversions.

Caching

Enabling website caching can improve website loading, and if you use a CMS you can install cache plugins which will let you enable either site-wide caching or caching of selected site elements.

Less is more

Sometimes your website's source code may contain unnecessary elements which will add up to loading times. If you use a CMS there are plugins which may be provided by your host, or if you're on the detail-oriented side you can always manually edit the source on your own.
#business #eventually #kill #slowloading #website
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  • Profile picture of the author Jason Walter
    100% agree with you. website speed really important now days specially on mobile. You should start building sites on AMP. Best way to increase website speed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Recreation Today
    Hi
    yes your right A slow-loading website will eventually kill any business A
    Website speed affects your traffic, page views, conversions, sales and your
    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author nshep
    There are a lot more factors to site speed though, for example:

    1. Quality hosting
    2. Using the latest version of PHP
    3. Keeping your site components up to date
    4. Decreasing server requests
    5. Caching, CDNs, compression
    6. Security (because nothing slows down your site than having it hacked)

    I wrote a post a while back about how to speed up WordPress sites. Much of it also applies to websites not built with WordPress. If anyone is interested: https://websitesetup.org/how-to-speed-up-wordpress/
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  • Profile picture of the author Tanda Copywriting
    The biggest factors affecting web loading speed I have found to be:

    1. CDNs - everyone should be using a content delivery network
    2. Caching - all resources should be cached, I prefer using a plugin like WP Rocket to do this.
    3. Images must be optimized
    4. You need a quality hosting with a short server response time. Most of the time this means a solution with a dedicated IP/server.
    5. Adequately written code.
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  • Profile picture of the author Khloe Hunter
    What is your take on utilizing CDNs to improve site speed?
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  • Profile picture of the author RuskinF
    I second your post. Really thought provoking it is. It's absolutely true that a slow loading website just kills your business.
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  • Profile picture of the author wasimnaqvi
    No doubt that a fast loading website is essential for good SEO but it is not the only thing that you need.
    If your content is eye catching, once a visitor visit your site will always want to visit again and again no matter how slow your loading speed is. So you have to focus on multiple thing rather than one
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    • Profile picture of the author kuchenchef
      - test your website regularly, press f12, check the console for error messages and use the audit tab in chrome or google pagespeed
      - use a cdn that operates servers near your customer's location (cloudflare has a free plan)
      - use server-side caching for everything
      - minify and compress css, javascript and html
      - don't stuff your website with features that don't add a clear value for the visitor
      - use code-splitting for your javascript and defer loading of any code that's not needed straight away
      - if you use something like react or vue, make use of dynamic loading for your components
      - lazy-load images (via intersection observer api for modern browsers and a getboundingclientrect based approach fallback for older browsers like ie11)
      - dns-prefetch, preconnect, preload
      - configure your server to use http/2 and brotli compression
      - set up proper cache-control and expires headers
      - use methods like requestidlecallback or async/await to execute non-vital javascript (but don't use it for everything)
      - where possible check if you can split large javascript tasks into smaller tasks and run them asynchronously, google isn't a fan of tasks that run longer than 50ms
      - keep your server up to date
      - avoid redirects and avoid changing urls
      - load non-vital data only when needed (e.g. load comments via ajax request only when the visitors scrolls to the comment section)
      - keep the css simple and avoid complex queries (e.g. div > div > div:not(.that) is bad, assign a class to those elements)
      - keep the html simple and avoid complex nested structures
      - limit animations to css transform and opacity, no javascript where possible
      - don't load large background photos or even videos in your page headers just because it looks cool
      - use flexbox or css grid instead of floats
      - if you can do it with a vector graphic, don't use bitmaps. if you use bitmaps, try to support webp
      - there is no real point in using jquery anymore
      - not really needed with http/2: inline your css in the head instead unless it's several 100kb
      - almost always image carousels are a feature that doesn't add anything except loading time
      - don't use masonry and alike. do your layout with css.
      - ...
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  • Profile picture of the author Serhii Oleksenko
    I installed an NVMe SSD on my server. Server speed has increased significantly!
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  • Profile picture of the author codyhay
    No speed no exit rate....
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  • Profile picture of the author Dana Goetz
    With a world of people who are used to instant results you are absolutely correct. Thanks for your post dear.
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  • Profile picture of the author shivam pandey
    1. Java-scripts issue
    2.to much flash content
    3.unclean code
    4.to many adds
    5.bad hosting
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  • Profile picture of the author Anna Athan
    A slow wordpress theme killed my website and the second I changed to generatepress I saw positive results. I won't mention the slow theme but it was one of those magazine themes
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  • Profile picture of the author Pamela123
    Yes, you are absolutely right! Slow loading can badly affect your business. Overall, it affects everything of your business like traffic, impression, sale and so more. No one will wait for a long time loading, rather move to another.
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  • Profile picture of the author floorsandingdublin
    Good SEO is useless if your website does not upload in time for google to show it. I had a website with hundreds of great articles and brilliant links. There was no way of getting good rankings. Then someone told me that my website takes ages to open. I hired a web designer to re-build the website.

    2 weeks later i had the 1st position for all my keywords. Over the years i had over optimised my website! Still 1st 2 years on. I only imagine how much money i lost because the low speed
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    • Profile picture of the author Henry Nine
      Originally Posted by floorsandingdublin View Post

      Good SEO is useless if your website does not upload in time for google to show it. I had a website with hundreds of great articles and brilliant links. There was no way of getting good rankings. Then someone told me that my website takes ages to open. I hired a web designer to re-build the website.

      2 weeks later i had the 1st position for all my keywords. Over the years i had over optimised my website! Still 1st 2 years on. I only imagine how much money i lost because the low speed
      Ha! Ha! Ha!

      The Same thing also happened with my website.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rio Vaks
    It's true that now when ranking Google prefers sites that load quickly. I always check the speed of loading pages on my site host-tracker.com/InstantCheck/Create?type=Waterfall Ways to increase download speeds depend on many factors. If the webreer is on WordPress, then there are special plugins for this. But first of all you should have a good hosting.
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