3 Factors Causing Your Website to Load at the Speed of Snail

Jonesen TeamIndustry Insights

When you click on a website link, how long do you expect to wait for it to open? According to research, not long: the chance of a visitor bouncing increases by 32% when load time goes up from one second to three.

Fast loading speed is vital to both your SEO and the user’s experience. But when your site is barely crawling along, how are you supposed to fix it?

It’s time to stop asking yourself “why is my website slow?” and do something about it. Read on for three factors that could be making your site travel at the speed of a snail.

1. Unoptimized Images

Images make up some of the largest files on most websites. As such, they’re often the culprit behind poor website performance speeds.

But getting rid of images altogether isn’t an option unless you want your site to look like a wall of text. Instead, make sure the photos and graphics you use are optimized for the web.

For starters, make sure that you crop images to the correct size before you upload them to your site. If your blog headers are all set to 1280×416 pixels, trim your images down to those exact dimensions.

Also, make sure to compress your images before uploading them. You can do this either in a separate photo editor or by using a site plugin. You can also try reducing the file size by switching to JPEG files for photos and PNG files for graphics, avoiding BMP and TIFF files when possible.

2. Slow Server Response Time

Sometimes a website that’s slow to load is the result of poor communication. If you’re on a shared hosting plan, you could be competing with other sites for valuable server resources. This means it ends up taking longer for visitors to be redirected to your site from a link.

If you don’t have many visitors to your site, shared hosting is fine to start out with. But once your traffic starts to grow, upgrading to a dedicated server may help you maintain the fast loading speed your visitors expect.

3. Too Many Plugins

Plugins are a fantastic way to enhance your website’s capabilities. They’re easy to install, save you from writing custom code, and are often free.

But running too many plugins at once can slow down your site, and in some cases, even cause it to crash. Try going through your list of plugins and deactivating any that aren’t essential for your site to function. Then, re-evaluate your page loading speed to see if it improves.

Make “Why Is My Website Slow?” a Question of the Past

Life is too short to suffer through agonizing page loading times. Give these tips a shot to take your website from snail to cheetah in no time.

If you’ve tried to fix the situation and are still asking yourself “why is my website slow?” it may be time to call the professionals for assistance. We can help you optimize your lemon of a site and turn it into a roaring Ferrari with fast loading speeds and modern, user-friendly design. Contact us today to get started.