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Have you ever visited a website link that took forever to load, or even failed to load at all? Some seem to hang up on data transfers and never get past that.
Browsing a website that has slow page speed and performance bottleneck could be more frustrating to the visitors than the site owner. Some of the issues contributing to this are discussed below and solutions to fix them.
Poorly Implemented Ads
Ad networks have somehow become annoyance catalyst on the internet. Am not against them, but going overboard, especially by displaying ads that try and trick users to download softwares, or make them think they have won lottery – when it’s all fake; that’s over the game.
Though it’s possible to make earn a decent income with the ads impressions, try to limit the number of displayed ads. Second, try to organize the ads so that they don’t deviate the attention of the readers from the main content on display.
Lots of Traffic & poor Hosting
Yes. You red it right. When more readers keep streaming into your site, your server performance gets slower and slower. It is the same as people queuing in a taco truck. As the line grows, the servers seem to be slower, due to the large number that needs equal attention.
The servers hosting a website will try to manage the large number of visitors, and when the limit is reached, it begins to restrain and take longer to respond – since the extra readers need same attention as others.
If you are using a shared server hosting for your website, then you might be in a queue with many other sites and apps around the world. Shared server means you have to divide the space and resources alike with other websites, on the same plan on offer by the web host.
To solve this, Here’s a golden solution : Host your website on the best hosting you can afford.
Hosting is the fundamental base component for everything you do online. SEO, browse ranking, chats, emails, ads system etc is all ran from your host. If you are in business and your website is for business advertisement, it makes sense to spend $70/month on hosting than poor $6.00/month shared host.
Heavy Files
Files like images and articles formatted in BMP and TIFF formats are usually heavy and take large amount of data speed and time to load. Most of the browsers can quickly load files in terms of JPEG, PNG, GIFF….since they are light. Also, check on the filesize. If it’s a couple of MBs and not KBs, you are going to end up with slow loading website.
To reduce file sizes, optimize your images. For instance, if you’re using Photoshop, when saving the final product, use the function ‘save for web’. It will automatically reduce the tons of size packet on the particular file.
Also, you can compress your images into smaller sizes with reducing their quality. For WordPress users : https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/ is an amazing plugin that can do the job at no charge at all. Compressing an image or video can save as much as 70% of the total size and this gives you a better website performance, in terms of speed.
Unnecessary site redirects.
In most instances, the best method for implementing redirects is by using 301 redirect. This is a preference especially for permanently moved web pages, and the owner wants to change the site structure without losing search engine ranking power.
But when the redirects options are many, they tend to confuse browsers from seeking content in the old location into new ones. It’s like sending passengers who have alighted from a train into a different exit gate, on a different part of the station. The directions changes, extra amount of time taken to walk into the gate and overcrowded number of travelers makes it a challenge for the station to run smoothly.
Unnecessary/many Plugins
Again, this is for the WordPress users. Each of the plugins you install on the website’s backend, makes its own file requests. CSS and Javascript commands have to executed every time a visitor is using the site. This slows the speed performance on the site. To solve the matter, only use the plugins that are necessary.
Don’t overcrowd the pan!
The ones that are unnecessary, or tempting to install, don’t give in. Delete them and save yourself more speed for better website and return site visitors.
Utilize Cache if possible
To cache, is simply storing or reserving information collection for future use. This means, instead of browsers being forced to generate afresh page info every time, the latest version of the page which was cached and stored up will be brought up for display instead.
This will save on a lot of time out, originally wasted on page loads, since every static files and posts for the page are already reserved.
Some of the cache plugins include : WP Super Cache – https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/
Consider CDN Content Delivery Network
If you have a site that’s popular, you can benefit from CDN. Irregardless of your site traffic, bandwidth, or even SEO; CDN is the Buddy network that carries the load. Essentially, a CDN works by serving site visitors by location. This means, to deliver files requested by a user on a browser, the CDN relies on the servers close to them geographically. This reduces download time.
For WordPress users, check out this plugin by KeyCDN https://wordpress.org/plugins/cdn-enabler/ . It’s both free and quick to set up.
For perfect and maximum results, ensure everything is loaded from the CDN even the smallest file like a Favicon.
Optimize your database
When junk piles up on a site, it costs precious amount of time to load and serve readers’ expectations. To ensure clean database for a site, you can delete old site revisions, remove spam and unapproved comments, site pingbacks, clean auto draft posts and trashed ones too.
You can try this plugin on your wordpress site : https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/ for temporary database optimization.
