I’ve Got A Fever, And The Only Cure Is More Speed.
As a guy who loves to drive, I can never go fast enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a rude driver nor a tailgater. Like most drivers, I expect to have a reasonable experience driving. I avoid potholes like everyone else and I look for the quickest routes, allowing me to get where I need to go as easily as possible.
The same sentiment can be said of your website. Every user has an expectation of enjoying their visit and easily navigating your website. I know I do, and I’m sure your visitors do as well. If your customers run into a slow loading page, it could be costing you sales and qualified leads.
Is your website optimized?
In this article, we will cover:
» The Importance of an Optimized Website.
» How to Optimize Your Website and Tools to Help.
» Common Reasons Why Your Website Is Slow.
Share This Article
SPEED MATTERS. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.
Building a great user experience for your website visitors is comprised of many parts. Everything from page size, images, caching, quality hosting, and external server requests to name a few. The only cure for a slow website… is more speed.
As of this writing, Google’s latest reports show that approximately 40% of users will leave a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Say What!?! Mobile users are even more likely to leave a slow website. Over half of mobile users will abandon your nicely designed website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Sounds crazy, but it’s understandable. Your visitors just want to enjoy the ride. Your visitors want to avoid the potholes of an unreliable website. They want to get where they want to go without having to click through multiple layers only to find out they took a wrong turn. Provide a great user experience and your sales will increase, engagement will happen, and business will grow.
Speaking of enjoying the ride, Google will test-drive your website and let you know how it performs. Speed, in more ways than one, will either give you better results. Or, in the case of a slow website, negatively impact your search engine rankings and user experience and engagement. Proper optimization will improve both and increase the overall value of your website.
AN OPTIMIZED WEBSITE MEANS MORE SPEED…
There are several ways to increase website optimization and satisfy your visitors need for speed. The easiest step is to optimize your images and website cache. What does this mean? For images, this simply means the larger your image file size, the longer it will take a browser to render (or display) that image. Your website cache allows you to reduce the number of elements that your visitor’s browser will need to load. They are presented with a static cached version of your pages content that is optimized for fast deliver so your visitor can get where they want to go.
But what about image quality you ask? An optimized image does not mean that image quality has to suffer. It can, and it often does. Properly optimizing your images can be easy.
⥤ If you are starting with new images, you can start in one of two ways:
- Select high quality stock images – the larger image size the better. Consider stock photography sites like iStock Photography or Big Stock. Avoid ‘free’ stock photography.
- Work with a professional photographer. This doesn’t guarantee quality photos, but it will help you capture unique and specific images when needed.
⥤ If you need to optimize current images, there are a few options that can help:
- Covert brand logos or icons to SVG files => Logos, icons, illustrations are just a few files that are vital to your brand recognition and should be optimized.
- Work with a professional Web Designer => A professional can optimize each image specifically for each use-case scenario. CompresJPG.com is a great resource to get started.
- Use an optimizing plugin that can batch optimize your media library. I personally use and recommend ShortPixel, but there a number of other options to consider.
NOTE: Your company logo and icons should be converted to the SVG file type, which will always present your logo clearly and without any loss in quality. You will most likely need to work with a designer to do this, but the payoff is worth it. By today’s standard, a JPG file for your logo is not recommended.
Another vital piece to optimizing your website is to reduce, or defer external server requests. Every website will need to load JavaScript, fonts, or other scripts for different features on your website. Each script loads vital functionality, that for the most part is never seen by your visitors like analytics, form submission, and many other features. How and when these are loaded will greatly affect the speed of your website.
One of the simplest ways to address external server requests is to integrate an optimization plugin like WP Rocket. Optimization plugins help combine or defer these scripts so they do not block the downloading of other assets on your site, thereby slowing it down. We recommend consulting with a professional web developer to help setup the optimization so it functions at the highest possible level. Remember an optimized website is a converting website… keeping your sales coming in and your visitors happy. Learn how we can help.
OPTIMIZED HOSTING MATTERS…
Nobody gets in their car and says “I think I am going to drive really slow today” nor do we choose to take the longest route to an appointment. Our time is precious, so we choose the fastest and most direct route when going anywhere. Likewise, you did not build your website to be slow. A fast, high-performing website provides a great experience for your visitors. It is vital that your website perform at it its best. Avoiding shared hosting is just as important of a choice as the content that you present to the public. On a shared hosting environment, there are hundreds, even thousands of other websites that are competing for resources and can greatly affect the load time of your website. If you are currently paying under $10/month, your website is most likely hosted on a shared server.
Choosing a hosting company that prioritizes good performance should be your main focus. At Werle Creative, we provide hosting that is optimized for WordPress. We can also highly recommend other popular hosting providers like WP Engine and Kinsta.
It is important to know who is viewing your website as well. Which is why website analytics is so important. If your business has a local audience, like a restaurant or appliance repair service, then ensuring your site loads fast for your local audience is your main priority. What about selling products online? Do you offer an e-commerce store that sells products globally? If so, you need to integrate a CDN or a Content Delivery Network. We personally use and recommend Cloudflare CDN. If a customer accesses your website in a different country, your website will have a significantly slower load time. A CDN, helps to deliver your website globally through a network of servers that store a copy of your website and loads them as if your site was local to your visitor. This can dramatically increase the speed of your website and deliver an enjoyable user experience for your customer. Several side benefits of using a CDN are increased security, easy availability when issues arise, and cached content reducing the load on your server.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY WEBSITE NEEDS OPTIMIZED?
The answer to this could be pretty obvious. What are your visitors saying? If you do not have access to their feedback, then using sites like:
GT Metrix
Website: GTmetrix.com
Pingdom Tools
Website: tools.Pingdom.com
Google Page Speed Insights
Website: Google PageSpeed Insights.
These sites will evaluate, score, and provide a report of what is slowing your website down. The most important piece of advice that I can provide is to pay attention to page speed, page size, and lowering the script requests. For the most part, the scores that are provided are irrelevant and should only be a gauge of the overall importance of optimization. It is not unheard of to have high grade scores and slow speeds. Prioritize page load speed.
Wrap up:
Your website is your best sales tool and it should be lightning fast. Slow loading pages will eventually cost you sales and engagement with your visitors. In our FREE download we’ll show you why it is important to optimize your website and how to increase speed.
Developing a website takes a lot of work and know-how. At Werle Creative, LLC we love helping business succeed, grow, and thrive. We can help you optimize your website today! Schedule a FREE 30 minute call with us.
Download our free e-book on Website Speed Optimization:
Five Reasons Why Your Slow Website Is Costing You Sales
Download our FREE resource – Five reasons why a slow website is costing you sales!
Share This Artcle
Mark Werle | Creative Director
Werle Creative, LLC
I'm a creative enthusiast who loves the outdoors and his family. I have been designing and 'branding' for over twenty years. Some might say I am a perfectionist, but in reality, I have a penchant for fine-tuning details until they feel right. I also love great conversation over a good cup of coffee. Book a time to connect with me. I'd love to meet you.
