In today’s digital age, site speed is incredibly important. If your site takes too long to load, visitors will simply leave and go to a competitor’s site. This means that you’re losing potential customers and revenue. In this blog post, we’ll discuss why site speed is so important and how you can improve your website performance!
Why do people click out of a website?
There are a variety of reasons people might click out of a website:
- The site is taking too long to load
- The site is not responsive
- The site is difficult to navigate
- There is too much pop up advertising
- The content is not relevant to what the person was looking for
- On-page SEO is not optimised
What is website speed?
Site speed is the amount of time it takes for a page on a website to load. Page load time is important because in this modern digital age, web users are generally impatient and want things fast! In fact, a recent study found that 40% of people will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. And, as web developers keep improving site speeds, this percentage is only going to keep going up.
So why is site speed so important?
There are a few reasons why site speed is so important. First, as we mentioned above, visitors are impatient and if your site doesn’t load quickly, they’ll simply leave and go to a competitor’s site. Second, fast site speeds improve the user experience. If users have a positive experience on your site, they’re more likely to come back. Finally, site speed is a ranking factor for search engines. This means that if your site is fast, you’re more likely to rank higher in search results, which can lead to more traffic and more customers.
How can you test your page speed?
To find out whether you need to improve your site performance, you can use a free website speed test. Site speed reports measure every element of your page including: images, videos, HTML code, files, etc. to see what the loading speed of your page is on both mobile devices and desktops.
Some applications for website speed tests include:
- Pingdom Speed Test
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Site Checker
- GTmetrix
- Sematext
How can you improve your site speed?
If your speed testing tool has revealed that your site speed isn’t optimised, don’t worry! There are a few ways you can improve your site speed.
First, you can optimise your images. Make sure that all of the images on your site are the correct size and format. Second, you can enable caching. Caching store’s static files on a user’s computer so that they don’t have to be downloaded each time they visit your site. Finally, you can use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN stores copies of your site on servers around the world, which can help improve loading times for users who are far from your server.
If you want to ensure that your site is fast and responsive, it’s important to regularly check your site speed and take steps to improve it. By following the tips above, you can make sure that your site is performant and provides a positive user experience. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to start optimising your site speed!
What else can I do to improve my site’s speed?
If you’re really wanting to set yourself up for success, here are a few more things you can try:
- Reduce server response time
- Minimise redirects
- Enable compression
- Improve scripts and stylesheets
- Optimise your database
Thanks for reading and happy optimising!