How to Check Website Speed and Improve Site Loading Time
Website speed is often confused with page speed. But, they are different. Website speed is the amount of time it takes a website to load on a browser. Page speed is the amount of time it takes a page to load on a browser.
For example;
If you have a five-page website (Home, About, Services, Testimonial, Contact), the amount of time required for website visitors to wait for your website pages to show up is referred to as a website speed. While the amount of time required for your home page to show up is referred to as page speed. Both website and page speeds matter.
Three Top Reasons Why Your Website Speed Matters
- First Impression:
Do you remember the last time you went to a restaurant? How were the waiters? If they were slow to respond to your needs, would you recommend the restaurant to your friends and family? A slow website is no different.
If your website is slow, your website visitors will click the back button and go somewhere else. The more website visitors click the back button quicker than they should, the more search engines like google will become unhappy with your website and lower its ranking and that’s money you are leaving on the table.
Website Conversion:
Whether you are a startup or a growing business, your website is an important part of your marketing. People visiting your website should be able to use it easily, find what they want at a good speed, and take action by clicking your website buttons. When that doesn’t happen, you find yourself caring for a website that doesn’t do the work. You have to decide what your website conversion should look like. Do you want your website visitors to click the back button and go somewhere else or do you want them to click your call-to-action button? Your website speed makes a great difference. How can you know which buttons your website visitors click the most?
- SEO Best Practices:
SEO might sound scary but search engine optimisation (SEO) belongs to your website. To make SEO do the work for you, there are a few housekeeping rules that might interest you. One of them is website speed. Website visitors’ experience matters to the search engine. Google has added website speed as a ranking factor. Although making your website fast is not enough to rank on the first page of Google, it’s important to think about your website speed so as to give your website visitors and search engines a better experience. A website speed on mobile devices is especially important for SEO.
Top Three Reasons Why Your Website Speed is Slow
Website Weight:
Website weight has to do with everything you have added to your website to empower it to work. For example; the images, graphics, texts, videos, plugins, themes, templates, and more. Although there are important resources to help your website function, they all add up to the weight of your website.
For example; If a waiter serves 10 dishes to a table instead of three, the speed of delivery will be slower compared to a waiter who serves only two dishes. Likewise, a page that has fewer resources to load will load faster than a web page with more resources to load.
- Internet Connection
You can’t control the internet connection of your website visitors. Even if your website is designed to be lightweight, it may still load slowly because of the internet connection of the visitors. For example; mobile devices using 3G or 4G will be slower compared to those using 5G.
- Hosting Plan:
Each time your website visitor browses a web page, the data needs to travel from your hosting destination to the browser of your visitor within seconds. If the hosting service is not doing the work properly, your web page will be slow. This is a factor you can control. Do your homework before choosing your hosting plan.
Five Ways of Quickly Improving your Website Speed
- Check your website speed: The first step of solving any problem is to know where the problem comes from. Take note of what the website speed report says and create a plan. There are many tools that can give you insight into your website speed. Some are easy to use and understand, others are not. The most common and easy to use website speed tool is Test my site by Google. I have a step-by-step video tutorial on how to use this website speed tool on my youtube channel.
- Keeping your website lightweight: This is where many people make mistakes when looking for a website. Most people simply add things to their website even if they don’t need them. The more things you add to your website the heavier it becomes. You can still create a website that looks and feels elegant, classic, professional, and functional without adding all plugins you see around you. You have to be intentional with the things you add to your website and if you have outgrown any plugin, images, pop-up, or page, tidy up your website and delete what does not serve you and your clients anymore.
Thinking about your website visitors’ experience is part of customer care. The more you think about how to improve their experiences, the longer they will stay on your website and if there are your ideal clients, could become your paying clients.
- Choose a Good Hosting Service: You can make your website lightweight and functional. But, if the hosting service you are using is not delivering fast services, you may end up with a slow website. Do your homework and choose the hosting plan that will give you and your website visitors better user experiences.
- Reduce Image and Files Sizes: Images are often the biggest offenders when it comes to website speed. Images are a must-have on any website. How to use images properly on a website is where many people struggle. You can resize your website images to be more responsive by having both desktop-sized images and mobile-sized images. So that your website doesn’t waste visitors time loading a desktop-sized image for a mobile device.
- Keep Website URL Redirect Simple: When you change your website structure, redesign your website or merge two websites together, you would need to put in redirects to ensure people visiting the old URLs are still being directed to appropriate pages on your website. This process can affect your website speed. If your website had been up and running for some years and was redesigned or restructured several times, you would be having multiple loops or chains in your URL. All of these activities can affect your website speed as visitors are moved from URL to URL before reaching their ultimate web page.
How helpful was this article? Share it with your friends and leave a comment below
Did you know that checking website speed is part of my done-for-you Website & SEO Audit?
