A recent study found that 53% of people will leave a website if it doesn’t load in three seconds. Think about that for one second. Your website could lose you sales and new business if it’s too slow. Having a fast website is vital. It give people a positive impression of your business and can actively improve your website’s search ranking.
There are certain things you can do to speed up your website.
There are a number of tools available to check how fast your website is. PageSpeed Insights is a tool that will give you an overall speed score for your website. It will also give you a number of useful recommendations and improvements that you can implement.
It’s important to view web hosting as an investment rather than an expense. Good hosting can shave seconds off your website’s loading time so buy the best hosting you can afford. Good hosting also comes with good support which is a bonus when you need help.
Large images can really slow your website down. There are a number of simple tools available that are great at compressing images without causing a loss in quality. It’s always worth running your images through these optimisation tools before you upload them to your website.
Themes often come bundled with functionality like image sliders and lightboxes that you might not even be using. Reducing the number of files and resources your website uses can have a big effect on page loading times.
Sometimes it’s worth stepping back from your website and looking at it critically. Do you really need so many large images? Do you need to use three different fonts on it? Is that image slider actually providing your visitors with a useful experience? If elements on your website aren’t useful and they’re slowing it down get rid of them.
I love to work with businesses who have a positive impact on the world and see the value of great design. If you need some help with a web design or branding project I’d love to hear from you.
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