Your Website Loads Slow? Here Are The Reasons Why
In today’s Internet age, where high-speed internet connections is almost as fast as mobile computer processors, everything is fast-paced. It’s like we’re living in a race, or we’re racing against time (and we feel we’re winning). It’s no wonder that even advancements in web development has taken quite a lot of rapid changes to go with the times.
So if your website loads one second late, you’re likely to lose web visitors. And if you’re running an e-commerce site, and your page loads 3 seconds slower, around 40% of your customers will abandon their carts and cancel their purchase. Reality bites but it’s true. Slow websites can kill your online business.
So here are some factors that we need to look into that could possibly affect your website’s slow-paced performance:
1. Images
If the images on your website are not optimized, it will take more time for it to load regardless of any browser or server you may have. Full-sized and uncropped images affect the website’s loading time. Maybe it’s time for you to reduce image quality or resize the image.
2. Embedded Media
Using media from external websites requires embedding. And since the source is external, it affects loading time. If the external website runs slow, your website will also run the same speed. Better host every media content on your server.
3. Spam
Spams affect loading time especially if these are all over your blog responses. Add CAPTCHAS or spam blockers to protect your site from spamming. Check your email settings.
4. Web Hosting
If your website is supported by shared servers, it is likely that your site will run slow. Shared servers are not dedicated to your website alone. There are other sites that share the web host’s resources and that’s where it can affect the loading speed.
5. Dynamic Scripts
Almost all websites are dynamic and responsive. This also affects loading time because the dynamics use the data from their own database. Caching allows you to store copies of those dynamic pages that you access often. Also, avoid including any dynamic coding within a file especially if the same information or coding will be included in another file. Instead, put the code in an external document which can be referenced by all pages that need it.
6. Flash Application
Flash applications add interactivity and animation to your website. At the same time, it makes your website bulky in terms of size, which in turn, affect loading time. Use XML which enables you to load sequences of external data and keep loading time under control.
7. Coding
Bulky coding from programmers can be another factor. The larger the web file, the longer it will take time to load. Ask your programmer to remove unnecessary white spaces and lines. Use JavaScript, external CSS, and CSS shortcuts. Take time to look at the source code of your webpages, there might be one line of code lurking that needs to be pulled out.
8. No Compression
Compression of web pages can cut down loading time. There are some web hosting services that automatically compress HTML sites but are likely to be aren’t compressed.
If you find these factors on your current website, better check with your web developer or web host about these. The sooner you get rid of the things that slow your site down, the better.