Top 4 Reasons For A Slow Website

Slow Website

Are you wondering why your attractive business website is slow to load yet it is one of the best in the industry? While slow and steady is an age-old adage that applies to life, it is a recipe for failure when it comes to the performance of your website. It might be difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s causing the site to slow down, but no matter what the cause, never leave a stone unturned.

Below is a short primer on some of the commonest reasons for slow website loading. In addition, you will also find tips on how to fix them.

Using Un-Optimized Images

Having a huge volume of un-optimized pictures on your website is one of the leading reasons why it may be running slow. While high-resolution pictures are attractive, they tend to occupy plenty of bandwidth during the loading process. Furthermore, uploading large-sized images and attempting to scale them down can also increase your web page size unnecessarily.

Another important consideration is the picture format you are using. For instance, JPEG images are small compared to other formats like GIF. Loading your page with JPEG pictures will help it load faster than if you are using other image formats like PNG and GIF.

Slow Website

Before uploading any images, make sure that they are 1MB or smaller and make sure that you use JPEG for large images. Make use of tools such as waterfall tests for image size scanning and take the required corrective action. Remember, uploading un-optimized images will eventually cost you money in terms of over the bandwidth use.

Your Flash Content

Flash is a great web tool that helps in adding interactivity to any website; however, too much of it on your page could lead to slow page loading. In most cases, flash content tends to be bulky and once it’s too big, your pages will load slower.

You have the option of altogether removing flash files or at the very least reducing the size of the files to improve page-loading speed. If you want to make your website run even faster, consider looking at HTML5 substitutes that can replace flash content on your site.

Too Many HTTP Requests

Loading your website with too many CSS and Javascript files creates many HTTP requests. Whenever a client loads your site, their browser has to make several requests for each file type to be loaded. This leads to reducing page load speed.

Make use of a log monitoring tool to find out the HTTP requests made and see which ones can be reduced through Sprites. In addition, reduce the number of files on each of your pages, which includes Javascript, images, and CSS file formats.

Too Many Ads

One of the best ways of monetizing your business is displaying advertisements, especially for websites experiencing high traffic. However, this does not mean that you need to sacrifice your user’s experience in order to make some cash. Do not post too many ads to your website, since they will eventually slow it down.

Overloading your website with ads leads to too many HTTP requests, which require extra processing time. This is especially true if the ads on your site are media-rich such as auto-downloads and pop-ups. Instead, use ads only where they are required and improve performance, user experience, and Click-Through Rate (CTR).

Takeaway

Your website’s load speed depends on factors like HTTP requests, images, flash content, and ads to name a few. If one of these is causing your website to slow down, everything else tends to suffer. In today’s business world, every second count, so optimize your website to offer visitors excellent performance every time.

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