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So you think you’ve done a pretty good job developing your website for your launch. You got an affordable custom website design, used quality photos from commercial photography, created useful blogs, and more. But just when you are about to launch your website and get a surge in online traffic, it begins to load slowly. And every second of delay can result in credibility dent and revenue loss.
Do you want to avoid this mishap in operating your business website? Find out the five culprits that make a website load slowly so you can mitigate the risks as soon as possible.
1. Poor Server Performance
When a customer lands on your website, their browser prompts the server and asks for information and data to load the site. If the server is performing unsatisfactorily, it will slow down the loading speed of the website.
A poor-performing server can be attributed to a poor web host. Usually, when you sign with a cheap web host provider, your web host provides you space on a shared server. In essence, your website is sharing space and resources with hundreds, maybe even thousands of other websites. In effect, the server takes longer to respond since other sites are also using its limited resources. To avoid this problem, consider switching to a better hosting plan or another service provider.
2. Remote Server Location
If your website server is quite far from a visitor’s location, the website load speed can be significantly affected. For instance, a user from Australia visits a website whose server is based in the U.K. The browser ping needed to load the website has to go all the way to the other side of the globe to request access for the required data and go back to the Land Down Under to reach the visitor’s browsing device. The idea here is this: the longer the distance of the server, the slower the website loads. As a good measure, you should opt for local servers as much as possible.
3. Too Much Flash Content
Flash can also be a factor in slowing down your website. Since flash content can be very heavy, having too much of it will affect the speed of your website page loading and function. What you can do is to reduce the Flash files sizes or get rid of them wholesale.
Uninstall Adobe Flash—using outdated software can make your system susceptible to viruses and malware. You can opt for HTML5 to replace your Flash content since they have relatively smaller file sizes while providing similar effects.
4. Lack of Caching
Caching is the technique of storing frequently used data in the browser’s memory. This will lead to a very fast loading speed the next time a user revisits the website. Since the information required to load the website is already cached, data retrieval will be a breeze. If your website lacks caching techniques, it will always load all the files from scratch every time a user accesses the website.
To solve this issue, you simply need to implement browser caching and server-side caching. This way, your website performance will speed up and improve tremendously.
5. Too Many Ads
Some business owners use ads to monetise website traffic. Unfortunately, some take it too far that they inject too many ads into their website.
Excessive ads affect the loading speed of web pages because they require many HTTP requests. While these ads clog up your site, your users wait significantly longer to load your valuable content. As a result, dissatisfied users can lose interest, click away from your website, and opt for your competitor instead.
Conclusion
These page loading deterrents are just some of the many culprits lurking in your website, causing it to become slow and clunky. Knowledge of these culprits will help you make the necessary adjustments to provide a good user experience to your clients.
Are you in need of a new website for your business? If you're starting a new venture or need a refresh, Online Designs UK is your one-stop local web designer. We'd love to meet for a coffee, or if you'd prefer, you can get a quote right away. Contact us at hello@onlinedesigns.uk.