When it comes to creating the perfect website for your business, many of us focus on the way it looks and of course the words that are on there. Of course, these are two very important things and things that you absolutely should look at, but you should never underestimate just how important website speed can be too.
In fact, the speed of your website can be a big factor in the first impressions of your business. You have around 5 seconds to capture the attention of the person on the other end of the computer, and if you don’t manage to show something in that time, then you run the risk of them clicking away from you and towards your competitors instead.
But why is this? What is it about a slow website that could kill your business?
73% of mobile internet users say that they’ve experienced a website that was too slow to load
A visitor doesn’t want to wait
As we have already covered, you only have around 5 seconds to make an impression on the visitor to your website. Unfortunately for any business owner, people are just not prepared to wait any longer. We, as people have become impatient and we don’t want to wait for anything, even a website to load.
A speedy website builds trust with your potential customers
In order to ensure that someone buys from you or gets in touch with you about your service, you are going to show them that they can trust you. A slow loading website is never going to make the most professional impression. Compared to a quick loading website which is going to show that you are professional and to be trusted.
Major search engines like a quick loading website
It isn’t just your potential customers who are looking at your website and making a judgement. The major search engines are doing the exact same thing. Their aim however, is to check how fast your website loads, which then forms part of their ranking. Those websites which load really quickly, those are the ones that are going to perform well in the search rankings.
A speedy website makes it easier to find what you are looking for
Chances are that the person who is looking at your website is doing so in order to find out more information about your business, or how to get in touch with you. If your website is slow to load, then whatever it is that your visitor is trying to find out, won’t be displayed and they won’t learn those key pieces of information.
What things can affect the speed of your website?
Now you know just why a speedy website is something that you should be focusing on, you might want to know more about the things that you could be having an impact and whether or not there is anything that can be done to fix them.
- The quality of your hosting company – we all like to get a bargain as often as we can, but you may find that your hosting company isn’t the place to do this. Unlimited service that is cheaper than a latte every month, well, let’s face it, the chances are, this isn’t going to be the best quality option for you.
- The size of your website – by this we mean the amount of images, videos and links that your website has on it. Whilst these things are important for a website that looks great, they can build up the size of your website, and then in turn your load time too.
- Whether or not you have external requests – it is a good idea to have links to your Facebook and Instagram on your website, as this will help you to get visitors to engage with your social media profiles. But, the trouble with these external requests, in particular if you display your social media feeds on your website, is that they load last and they could cause your entire website loading time to slow down.
- Your website is not optimised – in order to have a fast-acting website, you are going to need to make sure that it is optimised. There are some methods that you can try out for yourself on your website and there are also those that you are going to need to speak to your host about. However, good optimisation techniques can make sure that your website will load a whole lot faster.
Think that there might be an issue with your website and want to know whether it is slow loading? You can check just how fast your website is loading for your visitors by checking out websites such as https://gtmetrix.com or https://tools.pingdom.com. Both of these are designed to allow you to enter your website address, choose a test location and then begin the test.
If you find that your website takes any longer than 2 seconds to load, then you might want to think about some of the ways that you can improve this. Ignoring a slow-moving website, means that you are not only going to be losing customers, but that you may even be seen as unprofessional and a business that shouldn’t be trusted. Not quite the image that you are going to want to portray for yourself.
So, don’t delay. If you think that your website is too slow, then you might want to think about the ways that you change things up and make sure that you have the fastest website in the west.
Want to know more ways to make your website work better?
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