Have you ever visited a website and got stuck on that loading loop? Or images are not showing up when you know there is supposed to be an image there. Don’t you just want to leave that website annoyed and unsatisfied that you didn’t see what you were looking for? That is the same for all other users. Websites that load slowly have high bounce rates. Bounce rates are the number of people who close the website before it has even loaded. So, how fast should your website be?
47% of consumers expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. Any longer than that and you can say bye bye to the website visitor. While there are a lot of technical components to website optimisation (which we will help you with by the way), part of the website’s speed is dependent on the file sizes and what it needs to load things such as photos and videos. And because people are more adept to surfing the web with mobile devices now, keeping the sizes down is key.
Here are some “not-too-technical” tips to keep your website up to speed:
1. Choose a responsive theme.
A responsive website will make sure people can open and see everything they need to see whether they use a laptop, a tablet or a mobile phone.
2. Keep file sizes at a minimum.
Photos grab attention better than text, that’s why adding images to your webpages is vital. Before uploading any image, have a look at the file size. Raw images that have come straight from digital cameras and smartphones are generally large. You can optimise them by reducing dimensions and resolutions, as well as compressing them. Don’t forget our blog on A beginners guide to plugins and using Smush to help you to compress your images. You can achieve this without losing its quality with an image editing program, like Photoshop or PicMonkey.
3. Use a third-party media hosting.
Videos and audio recordings are great tools to market and help educate your audience. Consider using video hosting websites like YouTube, Vimeo or Soundcloud and add the links or buttons to your pages to direct to these sites instead of loading the files themselves to your webpages.
4. Plan ahead and keep plugins at a minimum.
Plugins add features to websites. The more plugins you have, the more resources you’ll need. Too many plugins can take up your storage space and cause the website to load slow. Security issues can also appear, which can impact the performance of your website.
5. Web fonts
Believe it or not, fonts also play a role on the speed of a page. We suggest sticking with your brand fonts, which will also help keep your website clean and consistent.
If your website is loading slow, Google’s PageSpeed Insights can provide you with a performance report and suggestions on how to improve your website. Most of the suggestions are technical like leveraging cache, using a Content Delivery Network or minimising the number of JavaScript and CSS files, but it will still give you a good idea on what you or your technical team will need to do.
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If you’re not online, we can help. Read about our process, look over our themes, and touch base if you have any questions.
Photo by By Andrey Popov on Getty Images Pro