Nowadays, a business without an online presence is a rarity. Almost every company has a website to promote their products and services to locals and expand the business internationally.
One of the most important features of a website that a customer pays attention to is speed. What is the first thing you notice when opening a website, if not how fast it opens?
Imagine you are opening a website, and it takes forever to load. How would you feel then? Nothing more than frustrated, apparently. According to research, almost half of the customers leave the site if it takes more than three seconds to load. This result is a good pointer that the speed must be optimized.
Yet, to be able to solve it, you must first detect what is slowing down your website. Find out the three most common causes of slow loading speeds and how to fix them.
Low-Quality Web Host
At first sight, the hosting service is not to blame for a slow-running website. But the truth is, it can be. A high-quality hosting service equals a well-performing website and vice versa; low-quality hosting equals a bad website.
A good hosting provider will provide the best service to the customer. You can expect lightning-fast speeds, robust security, an uptime guarantee above 99.95%, and fast and responsive customer support.
On the contrary, a low-quality hosting provider won’t offer you the best service. They might not have the best security package, including firewall protection, anti-malware, antivirus, or full-time customer support. Instead, you might suffer limited disk space and bandwidth, slow load times, and too much downtime, all of which affect your user experience and profits.
If you are facing such issues, don’t wait until the hosting service fails completely but switch to another as soon as possible. The Internet is overloaded with hosting, so you can choose what works for you. And if it’s too much of a hassle, click here to discover one of the best web hosting services on the market.
Online Advertisements
Many website owners use ads as a way to monetize their websites. Indeed, ads may bring extra income, but have you ever considered whether they influence the site’s performance? The answer is they absolutely do.
Ads increase the load time of the page, and they may as well be irritating to customers. Even if they don’t slow down the website, they may chase away the customers by only distracting them.
Nevertheless, adding commercials also adds more HTTP requests which directly impact the load speed of the site. More HTTP requests result in lower loading speed. For example, media ads rich with videos, gifs, and animation may create many HTTP requests and lead to an unresponsive website.
What’s the solution, then? Try to reduce the number of ads on your website, which will surely improve your website’s performance.
CDN Service
Last but not least is a CDN, an acronym for Content Delivery Network. It is a global network of mutually connected servers located all over the world.
If you have customers from all around the world, then CDN is a must. It enhances the website’s performance and provides worthy SEO benefits such as faster load time, security, optimizing images, etc.
How to help yourself in case you don’t use CDN service? The answer is simple. If your hosting provider doesn’t include it, switch to another one. Consider finding a CDN service provider with accessible customer service with 24/7 support in order to avoid unexpected problems.
What if you are using CDN and your website still has poor performance? Well, take a breath and refresh your website. If it still doesn’t load, then try with cache and cookies clearing. If there is no response either, then again, try contacting Customer Support.
Conclusion
To sum up, website speed is a key factor when it comes to the customer’s decision. Yet, unfortunately, plenty of things interfere with the load speed. A bad hosting provider, online ads, and a CDN are only three of the many factors.
If any of the above concerns you, hopefully, this article will help you enhance your website performance and avoid distracting your customers. And if not, don’t give up. The answer is out there, so you must be persistent in speeding up your site. Ultimately, it will be well worth it!
