Your website is the face of your business, but if it’s operating at a snail’s pace, it may be one of the reasons why you are turning away your visitors. After all, no matter what your business offers, your site visitors will be able to find something else to meet their needs on the internet, rather than wait eons for your web pages to finally load correctly.
If your website is operating slowly, you need to get to the source of the problem. There are common issues for slowdown, and some of them are explored below.
- You have too many images on your website
Despite the visual appeal of images, be they photographs, logos, or icons, they can significantly slow down your website. On a technical level, you could implement a sprite sheet into your coding. If you are familiar with website building, you can check out this lesson on creating and using a sprite sheet in HTML and CSS to improve your loading times. If you are reliant on a website builder, such as Wix or WordPress, remove some of the images from your page, or reduce the sizes, and then reload your website to see if any differences have been made.
- There are too many ads
Using ads on your website is a useful way to make money, but there is a caveat. Not only will they irritate your site visitors, especially when your page is overloaded with them, but they will also slow down your site. While you may be reluctant to remove the ads from your site, know that you will lose money if they are causing your visitors to vacate your website. Only use those ads that are generating an income for you, and commit to one or two, rather than overloading your site and the frustration level of your users.
- You are getting too much traffic
Can you ever have too many people visiting your website? The common sense answer is ‘no,’ especially when your visitors are generating income for your business. However, your server will struggle to keep up with the high volume of page requests, and to compensate for the high traffic, will start to slow down areas of your website. To counter this problem, you may need to move to a different web host, especially if you have ended up with a shared server. Ensure you have optimized your website first, as the host may not be the issue, but if problems persist, check out this guide to migrating to a new host.
- You haven’t updated your CMS
If you are using a CMS (content management system), such as the aforementioned Wix or WordPress, then you need to keep up with any updates when prompted. These providers are constantly trying to improve their services to you, and consequently your customers, so always update to the latest software and plugins when they are recommended to you. By doing so, you will have faster loading times as a result, and the chances of slowdown may be negated.
Finally
These aren’t the only reasons why your website may be running slowly, but they are the most common. Go through each of these points, and you may get your answer. If not, consider hiring a professional web designer to help you get to the bottom of the problem. Despite the expense, you will add to your profits when you no longer lose your valuable site visitors because of your slow-running website.
What common issues do you believe contribute to a slow loading website? Did these hit the mark or do you have something else to share? Join in the conversation by leaving a comment below!
