The impact of a fast-loading website on your organization must not be underestimated. According to studies, a slight delay in page load time can result in an 11% drop in page visits. It can trigger a 7% drop in conversion rates.
Slow-loading websites might have a bad influence on your business as a result. A slow-loading website might hurt your company’s customer base & earn purchases. The reason is you must prioritize the development of a quick website. Rank better on Search engines such as Google. Thereby increasing your earnings.
What Is the Impact of Website Performance Optimization on Conversion Rates?
Humans are restless by nature. Sitting is now regarded as a nuisance. It can be avoided since we are so used to seeing everything happen in moments. If your website takes time to open or is sluggish to navigate, customers are likely to abandon it. They are likely to never return. This is bad for your business since it will result in the loss of income and prospective new customers. According to statistics, 79 percent of customers would not return to a website that performed poorly. This will result in a significant loss of possible sales. It might cause reduced engagement rates throughout the term. Both of which are preventable.
You are incorrect if you believe there is no proof that faster load times mean more conversions. According to recent research, conversion rates drop by 25% when loading time is increased by only one second. Overall, keep in mind that a quick website is a website that sells, thus you should prioritize speed optimization.
Why is it possible that my website is running slowly?
A speed test may be used to determine how quickly your website is. If you see that it is sluggish, you might question why. There are several reasons why your website may be slow:
- Server load times
- Huge graphic files such as images and videos
- Unnecessary redirects.
Fundamentally, it implies that there are numerous things you may do to improve your site’s performance. We’ll go through a few of them in this post to see what you can do to make your website quicker.
However, before we begin, you must first define a target for load time speed.
How Long Should a Page Take to Load?
To define a good load time, you must first figure out what the acceptable standard is. According to Google, your ideal time is 3 seconds. Most websites, on the other hand, fall well short of that standard. When Google looked at the performance of over 900,000 pages, it discovered that 70% of them took at least 7 seconds to load. That too only the video components.
If you can get your site to match Google’s criteria, you may stand out among your competition. Using the search engine’s suggestions and benchmarks to create new goals and monitor your site’s success is an excellent strategy.
4 Ways to Make Your Website Faster to Open
There are several methods to enhance your website’s user experience. We’ll go over some best practices. In addition to them, some helpful hints are shared too. These may assist you to reduce your site’s load time. Also, improve the website’s effectiveness.
Don’t be intimidated by all of the advice you’ll find here. You will not have to use all of them right away. Instead, you can utilize each one individually until you get the desired pace.
So, let’s get this party going.
Select the Best Hosting Package
When a company is starting, most owners want to save money. Cost-cutting measures of every scale are considered. A low-hanging component is hosting possibilities. As a result, low-cost hosting choices are used, which do not scale effectively as the website grows in popularity.
Even if you start with a lower-cost hosting plan, you must remember to upgrade. Especially as your business grows and more people arrive. You can choose from three different hosting options:
- Hosting on a shared server
- Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting
- A specialized server is required.
The very first, shared hosting is also the most affordable choice. It is common for it to cost roughly $5 each month. Even as it functions OK for low-traffic sites like blogs, this becomes nearly worthless when
- your traffic grows
- you receive more visitors.
If similar sites on the shared hosting platform are gaining popularity, it may influence your website. This is something that most business owners tend to ignore.
You share the same server as other websites, which means you share CPU, storage space, & RAM resources. When your website starts to develop, this might generate a lot of problems.
Another shared alternative is VPS hosting. In this case, though, you will have your dedicated portion of the server’s capabilities.
This is a middle ground solution that is ideal for small enterprises and start-ups. It secures your site from those other sites on the hosting platform while requiring you to spend for dedicated hosting.
The most stable solution is to get a dedicated server. You are not obligated to share your assets with others. Nevertheless, you would also be in charge of the server’s setup & technological upkeep. Dedicated hosting gives you:
- greater space
- the ability to manage greater traffic
- the flexibility to customize it to your specific needs
Its sole disadvantage is that it is costly, which might also be more than enough for small businesses to handle.
Reduce the time it takes for the server to respond
The DNS lookup time has a significant influence on the speed with which your website loads. A Domain Name System, or DNS, is a server that maintains a list of IP addresses and their associated hostnames. Whenever you input a URL into the browser, the DNS accepts it and converts it to an IP address. This is then used by the computer to locate the site’s internet presence.
A DNS lookup is performed to discover a particular DNS record based on this rationale. It’s similar to searching for a mobile number in a telephone directory. If you try to dial “John” on your mobile, nothing happens. You would be able to call him if you input the digits of his mobile number.
The same may be said for your PC. When you input a URL, it has no meaning. Only after the DNS server converts it to an IP address can you get to your desired location.
The time it takes for the DNS to convert words into IP addresses might be excessive at times. As a result, if you want to speed things up, you might consider switching DNS providers. Web pages would be able to find your site more quickly. As a result, the load time will be faster.
Think about using a CDN (Contact Delivery Network)
To improve load times for your website users, consider setting up your site on more than one server. When you depend only on one server, it will get all requests from across all visitors. This implies that when your site gets busier, it may take longer to load. It may even cease responding to user queries.
That’s a problem. Increased traffic means more opportunities for your business to expand. This is something that you don’t want to miss out on. Especially if it is triggered by technical issues.
That’s where the CDN, or Contact Delivery Network, comes in to assist you to overcome all of these problems. You may cache your website on a worldwide server network by utilizing a CDN. Resultantly when a visitor wishes to view your website, they are sent to the server that is nearest to them.
This makes the website accessible to the visitor sooner. It will be able to load quickly due to its proximity.
Redirects should be minimized
Redirects are the most effective approach to deal with broken links, and they’re a must when moving or deleting pages. Possessing many of them, on the other hand, might slow down your website, especially on mobile devices. This is why it’s better to reduce them to a bare minimum, and Google recommends doing away with them entirely. Although this might not be a possibility for you, there are many things users can do to better the situation.
To begin, use third-party tools to find all of the redirects that are currently active on the website. The data may then be analyzed to discover the objective of your redirects. If you come across any redirect chains, you may change your .htaccess file to point them all to some of the latest editions of that page. That’s one approach to prevent a page that takes a long time to load.
Conclusion
If you’re not tech-savvy or have little expertise with website development, reducing the overall load time of the page can be challenging. This will undoubtedly be worthwhile. A fast-loading website will:
- improve traffic
- boost revenue,
- give your present and future clients a positive image of your business
You must bear in mind that not all of the suggestions must be applied at once. They may prove to be beneficial in the long run. If you opt to do them one at a time because each one has a significant influence on your site speed objectives.
When you start optimizing your website, you should spend some time examining your site performance results. You should also determine which problems have the greatest influence on load time. This will help you to concentrate on the most serious issues first and take aggressive efforts to address them. If you’re still having problems with your website after that, you might seek solutions to boost the loading time.
Analyze your website’s performance regularly. Promptly resolve any difficulties that arise. Ensure that your website is always available to potential clients.
Aditya Kathotia
Aditya is the Founder and CEO of Nico Digital and Digital Polo. He has attained the pinnacle of brand design expertise by delivering true value to brands and marketers. After pursuing his higher education in Business Analysis from Manchester Business School, he has helped both Nico Digital and Digital Polo unlock its true branding potential globally. You can reach out to him on LinkedIn and Twitter.