Oct 26, 2015 : Does Your Website Run Fast Enough?

📅 October 26, 2015 - In the online world, speed it everything. Nobody wants to wait for a website to load. In fact, you have about 3 seconds to capture each visitor's attention when they visit your site. If it takes 5 to 8 seconds for your site to load, they may already be gone.

Fast-loading websites are favored by visitors and by search engines. Both Google and Bing have admitted that load times factor into the overall ranking of websites with their algorithms. Anything more than three seconds is simply unacceptable.

Checking your Load Times


Before you start making changes to make your site load faster, check your load times with GTmetrix.com or Pingdom.com. Both will show you how quickly your site loads and if you need to make changes.

What if My Site is Slow?

If your website loads slowly, there are a few things you can do to make it load faster. Those using WordPress can add a few performance plugins, such as a cache plugin and an image optimizing plugin for faster load times. You can also minimize redirects, get rid of error pages and turn off any plugins you are not using.

Sometimes, the theme you are using causes slower load times. Testing a new theme may help you gain faster load times for your website.

Another thing you can do is a virus scan. If your site has a virus, it may be slowing it down. Use a trusted virus scan program and you may uncover the issues quickly and easily.

Should you Change Hosting?

It's no secret that website hosting may be the cause of your slow load times. If you are using shared hosting and you have a site with a large amount of daily traffic, upgrading to VPS or dedicated hosting may speed up your site.

Sometimes, it's the hosting company you are using that is causing the issue. They simply don't have the best servers or they overload the servers for shared hosting accounts. Both of these issues can be resolved by switching to a better hosting company.

Hosting plays a huge role in the speed of your site. Shared hosting will always load slower than VPS or dedicated hosting. Cloud hosting can go either way, depending on the company and the cloud you are using. It's best to use a reputable hosting company and get a VPS or dedicated package, if you want the fastest possible load times.

Figuring Out the Issues


One of the best ways to find out what is going on with your slow load times is to use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool will give you a score for both the online and mobile version of your website. It will also give you a list of things you can fix to make your site load faster.

If you think your website loads too slow, you can speed it up with the tips above. Make sure you do everything you can to make it load as fast as possible, if you want better ranking and more conversions.