Research by Google reveals that around 53% of people leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. On top of that, website performance is one of the driving factors in SEO.
What does that mean for you and your website?
Apart from the design and the content, you need to work on page speed and performance as well. As a website owner, it should be your goal to deliver the best experience for your visitors. If you hold up that end of the deal, you’ll have more leads and engagements for your blog or business.
The best way to start working on website performance is by first understanding what affects it first.
1. Mobile-Friendliness
This is one of the most important factors to consider. Keep in mind that not all desktop websites translate well into mobile devices.
Your website should be optimized to run on smaller screens. One that aren’t mobile-friendly can run into issues such as slow loading speed and assets that improperly load. This is a major handicap to your website because a majority of users are accessing their browsers on their smartphones.
2. Bad Hosting
Is your web host providing the best service?
If there’s one aspect of website management that you shouldn’t be stingy with, it’s web hosting. A good service should allow your website to run fast and securely. It’s not just about the quality of work a service provider gives. You should also make sure that you’re getting the right type of web hosting service.
There are three primary types of web hosting:
- Shared Hosting – a cheap type of hosting where you share the server with another websites. Good for small websites with little traffic. You can upgrade to VPS or virtual private hosting once your visitors grow. In a VPS, you share the server with fewer websites.
- Dedicated Hosting – a more expensive type of hosting. Here, your website is running on its own server so you don’t share any bandwidth with other platforms. Great for websites with a huge amount of visitors.
- Cloud Hosting – your website runs on multiple remote servers. If one of the servers goes down, another replaces it. This increases uptime significantly. It’s more scalable and affordable as compared to other hosting types.
3. Widgets And Plugins
If your website is running on a platform like WordPress, it’s so easy to be tempted by the plugins available.
These plugins take assets to load. That means enabling too many of these will slow your website down. Go on the backend of your website and sift through all of your plugins. Are all of them really necessary?
Some website owners add so many plugins that they don’t notice how some of them are no longer practical to use.
4. Poor Coding
Coding plays a huge role in the performance of a website. You shouldn’t just look for code that’s good. You should look for code that’s clean and efficient.
Unless you know how to tinker with web codes, it’s best to have a professional work on the backend instead. Aside from compressing the lines, they can also sort out issues such as extra spaces, line breaks, and other formatting problems.
5. Heavy CSS And JavaScript Files
Sluggish websites usually suffer from CSS and JavaScript problems. Aside from style and functionality, both programming languages can also cause problems for your website.
Web developers suggest fixing the problem by moving the tracking code and scripting to a below-the-fold area. Those codes are originally placed with above-the-fold content.
Performance is one of the most important aspects of an online platform’s success. The goal is to deliver the best user experience for your visitors. Now that you know what the factors that affect performance are, it’s time to go back to your website and begin optimizing it for success.