Site speed has been a factor in website performance since the beginning of the internet. Many users even abandon the site if the load time is longer than expected. According to online marketing expert Neil Patel, 47% of consumers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. Users are becoming increasingly less patient as modern attention spans become shorter and shorter. It’s more important than ever to make sure that your beautiful looking website loads before your visitors decide to head elsewhere. If you’re curious about your website’s current speed, you can check it here. Even if your website scores well, you want to be continually optimizing because the digital world is always evolving.
Uncompressed and Bulky Images
Images are important for your website, but speed should be a consideration before adding tons of images to your pages. Size and image quality impacts the load time of your website, ones that are unnecessarily high-resolution will hurt your site speed. Compressing images is a quick and easy way to speed up your website. There are many image compressing options available online, and even WordPress plugins that will automatically compress your images when you upload them.
Nonessential Plugins
If your website is on WordPress, you’re surely familiar with plugins and how useful they can be in building and using your site. But, too many plugins will slow down your performance. We recommend doing a quarterly audit of the plugins on your website and removing any that are outdated or no longer needed on your pages. If you’re on WordPress, you can check the impact of plugins on your site speed using the Plugin Performance Profiler (P3).
Low-Quality Web Hosting
An unreliable web hosting server can severely hurt your loading times. As your website begins to receive more and more traffic, your current web hosting server may not be able to handle it and it might be time for an upgrade. Opting for a budget-friendly hosting solution can leave your site as slow as molasses, so we recommend shelling out the few dollars for a trusted server.
Do You Need Help with Improving your Website’s Speed?
If you need help with your website’s load speed, turn to Boston Web Marketing. Our services range from web design to search engine optimization to social media marketing and more. If you want more information on how we can help your business get found online, you can call us at 857-526-0096 or contact us directly on our website.