Slow website = dead website! Why is your website slow to load?
Website loading speed is one of the most important aspects of a successful online business. Research shows that users are becoming increasingly impatient and expect web pages to load instantly. If your site is slow to load, you risk losing visitors, conversion rates, and the reputation of your resource. Why can a website load slowly? Let's look at a few reasons.
1. Low speed hosting: If your hosting provider does not provide a high enough transfer rate or its servers are overloaded, it can slow down the loading of your resource. It is recommended that you contact your hosting provider to improve performance.
2.Unoptimized images: images can be large and "heavy" in size and are one of the main reasons for slow website loading. Optimize images by reducing their size without sacrificing quality. There are many tools and plugins that can help automate this process.
3. Code overlays and complex scripts: Make sure your code is optimised and does not contain unnecessary lines. Also pay attention to the scripts used on your platform. Complex and multiple scripts can cause loading delays. Try to combine and minimise them.
4. No caching: Caching allows you to save some data about your site on the user's computer. If your site doesn't use caching, every time the page is visited, the browser requests all the resources from the server, which causes additional delays. Enabling the caching mechanism can significantly speed up its loading, because repeated visits will use the saved data.
5. Remote server location: If your server is located far away from the users location, this can cause delays in data transfer. A solution may be to use content delivery networks (CDNs), which distribute your site's content to servers that are closer to end users. This will reduce response times.
6. Lack of database optimisation: If your resource runs on a database, unoptimised queries and slow operations can slow down load times. Make sure your database queries are optimised, use indexes to speed up queries, and clean and optimise your database regularly.
7. Mobile Optimisation: With an increasing number of users using mobile devices to access the internet, it is important to pay attention to mobile website optimisation. Slow loading on mobile devices can be caused by incompatible or improperly configured mobile design, redundant images and scripts. Make sure your website is fully optimised for mobile devices.
There are several tools you can use to check your site's loading speed. Here are some of them:
1. Google PageSpeed Insights: This is a free tool from Google that analyses your platform's load speed and provides optimization recommendations. You can simply enter your website URL on the PageSpeed Insights page and the tool will do the check. It will give you an estimation of your loading speed and optimization for mobile and desktop devices.
2. GTmetrix: This online tool provides detailed reports on the performance of your resource. GTmetrix analyzes page load, identifies bottlenecks and offers optimization recommendations.
3. Pingdom Website Speed Test: This tool also provides detailed website load speed analysis. It shows the load time of each page element and also offers comparisons with other platforms and gives an estimate of your resource's performance.
4. WebPageTest: This tool allows you to check the loading speed of your site from different locations and devices. It provides detailed information on load time, page size, number of requests and other performance metrics and also allows you to analyze website performance across different browsers.
When using these tools, it is important to keep in mind that results may vary slightly depending on the server location chosen and the testing parameters. It is recommended that you run multiple tests and analyse the overall trend to get a more accurate picture of your website's performance.