I can’t buy from that website. It takes forever to load.
This webpage is so heavy, it could outweigh elephants.
A snail crossed the road and this website hasn’t yet loaded.
If any or all of the above sentences sounded familiar to you, welcome to the club. Now, you know how bad it s*cks to deal with a slow loading website.
But is that where the problem ends? Not quite, unfortunately.
Website loading speed is one of the major factors deciding your business’ fate on the web. Don’t believe that? Well, now you must go through the reasons below.
Why Page Speed Matters?
For the starters, Neil Patel in one of his blog posts said,
Nearly 50% of internet users agree on leaving a website that doesn’t load within 2 seconds.
And then, he says, boosting your page’s loading speed can increase pageviews by 11%, user satisfaction by 16% & conversions by 7%.
Still need more reasons for believing in the need for developing fast loading websites?
Well, the internet user base in 2019 is a bunch of impatient individuals. None of us can spend a lifetime waiting for a website to load. You yourself would know that.
This simply means that the best you can do is speed up your website’s loading speeds and keep it that way.
But, there’s a question right after that; HOW?
Tips to Boosting Page Loading Speeds
1. Reduce Page Size
One of the major reasons why your website may be taking forever to load is that it’s heavier than it should be.
This means that the content on your website is occupying more bytes than it can easily load.
Solution to this?
Walk down the stairs. Get your hands dirty. Get rid of redundant elements. Optimize visual content. Start using cloud distribution networks for hosting videos on your own server. And you will be good to move further.
2. Optimize Images
An extension to the first tip, this one is crucial to explain.
As mentioned above, certain elements add weight to your website, making it slower than it normally would.
Images and graphics are one on the list of these elements.
So, what’s the best you can do?
Here are the steps to follow.
Step 1: Visit optimizilla.com
Step 2: Upload the images that you want to optimize
Step 3: Download the optimized images
This is an easy way of reducing the size of images for using on your website after optimization.
Tip: Don’t forget to rename the images after downloading as alt-texts may be disturbed otherwise.
3. Optimize Page Speed with Tools
On the web, a number of free tools are available for monitoring your website’s loading speeds.
One such tool is GTMetrix.
All you need to do is visit gtmetrix.com and paste your website/webpage’s URL and hit enter.
The tool will take you to the results’ page where you will be able to see the issues making your website slow.
What you need to do after this is read through and fix as many issues as you can.
Note: This step may require you getting into your website’s cPanel.
If you aren’t comfortable with that, don’t do it on your own. Instead, get in touch with a local web developer. For instance, when you live in Greenvile SC, contact a web development in Greenville SC to handle the case for you.
Final words
Page speed optimization is one of the most crucial parts of website development and management. No wonder, most digital marketing in Greenville SC companies pay close attention to this area.
In this post, we tried to show why it’s so important and how you can achieve it.
Hopefully, this was helpful.