The loading and display speed of a site are essential elements for its image. They allow for an increase or decrease in the number of visitors. If you find that your site takes a long time to load, you must find a solution. For that, this article will help you.
How to know if your site is slow?
Test your site
You can use an online analysis tool like Pingdom to test your site. Pingdom will show you how your page loads compared to others and will also give you a score and other technical information. You just have to indicate the page you want to test.
Test your Internet connection
Remember to also test your Internet connection, especially the speed. There are online tools that will allow you to do this. You must take into account:
- The downstream speed: this is the speed at which the pages of your site are displayed. It averages 10 megabits per second (MBPS) and varies depending on your location.
- The upload speed: this is the speed at which an image is loaded on your site. It can be, on average, 1 megabit per second.
What are the causes of this problem?
The quality of the host
The choice of the host and the type of hosting is important because it can have an important impact on the page loading time.
The lack of cache
It is essential to know that the cache is important because it keeps the heavy files downloaded by a user during a previous visit. It allows to speed up the page loading time.
The weight of the images
If your page contains too many images and they are not optimized for the web, it will have a negative impact on the loading time of the site.
The size of the page
The size of your page also matters because if it is too long, it will be heavier and will take longer to load.
What could be the consequences?
The decrease in the number of visits
When a site is slow, Internet users tend to close the window. They look for sites that can give an answer in a snap. So, if your site takes a long time to load, you should expect to lose visitors.
Decreased reliability
Internet users tend to judge the reliability of a company by the speed of its site. This problem can lower the popularity and credibility of a company.
Decrease of the turnover
A fast site allows an Internet user to navigate more quickly from one page to another, which will increase your number of views as well as your revenues. If the site is slow, visitors will not come back!
What are the solutions to optimize the loading speed?
1. Monitor your site regularly
To remedy the loading problem, regularly monitor your website with analysis tools, such as Google PageSpeed Insights or Gtmetrix. They analyze the content of your page and offer suggestions to optimize the loading speed. This can be done via caching and data transfer.
2. Use a caching system
Setting up a caching system will reduce the number of requests sent to the server. Therefore, it will considerably improve the loading speed of a site.
3. Compress your site’s visuals and JavaScript and CSS files
Consider optimizing your site’s visuals. To do this, but the visual at the right size. It should be resized so as not to weigh down the site. After resizing it, you can compress the visual. JavaScript and CSS codes can also weigh down a site and increase the loading time. To remedy this, you must reduce the size of these files by compressing them.
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