Loading speed refers to the time it takes for a page on your site to fully load. This factor has a direct impact on your visitors’ user experience , as we all expect to receive the information we need as quickly as possible.
Some studies show that people expect to see information on your site within a maximum of two seconds; after this time, your users begin to question your site’s legitimacy and security. On the other hand, search engines measure your site’s speed by the time it takes users to receive the first byte of information; this factor is directly related to the response speed of the server where your site’s information is stored.
Why is loading speed important? How important is
Users generally associate a site that loads quickly with the quality of the information they’ll find there and its security. Therefore, a site that loads slowly begins to generate doubts among users. If your site takes more than 4 seconds to load all the information, they’re very likely to abandon it. If we consider that when we search for information on the internet, we open several sites at the same time, logically, we’ll start browsing the one that shows us the information first.
On an e-commerce site, loading speed is an even europe cell phone number list more important factor since users associate it with the shopping experience . Most shoppers will abandon a slow site; they won’t return to it in the future, and many of them will tell their friends about their poor shopping experience. If you take care of this detail, your potential customers will be able to obtain all the information about your products in less time; they’ll have more time to check out other products you offer.
Search engines
In 2010, Google announced that it would consider a site’s loading speed as a factor that directly affects its ranking in its search results . The reason is that search engines generally want to offer their users sites that offer quality content and a good browsing experience.
You must ensure the quality of your website’s programming . Outdated code, unoptimized WordPress plugins, and JavaScript applications are important factors to consider. It’s a good idea to review this issue with your web developer to resolve the issue.
It’s advisable to choose your site’s hosting based on its needs . An informational website with a few sections that doesn’t receive many visits per month requires much less server capacity than a shopping site with hundreds of pages and thousands of visits. The latter will likely use applications that require quick delivery of information, as well as server-side processing of activities such as database queries.
If you sell ads on your site, filling it with them will result in more images and, therefore, more information to load. On the other hand, if you belong to an ad network like Google AdSense, the ads load the importance of instagram’s role from a server separate from yours, over which you have no control. Having too many ads on your site, in addition to impairing the user experience, will result in blank spaces until they finish loading.
Heavy videos and images
Videos have become increasingly popular in recent years and are a great conversion tool; however, storing them on your own server will increase the load to the point of overloading it. In these cases, it’s recommended to embed the videos on dedicated sites like YouTube . For images, use design programs like Photoshop to compress the images as much as possible without affecting the quality of what your users see.
How can I improve my loading speed?
The browsers your users use to visit your site have the ability to save versions of your pages ; so when they return to your site a second time, it loads part of the information from a copy stored on the user’s computer and another part from the server, significantly reducing loading time.
Improve your hosting
A server is basically a computer that stores your How important is website’s information. With the help of your web developer, you should determine your site’s load and choose the hosting service that best suits it.
You can check out the following post for more information on how to choose the best hosting option for your site .
A Content Distribution Network is a network of united kingdom data servers distributed around the world that stores a copy of your site. The advantage of choosing a hosting service with this feature is that it doesn’t matter what country you’re visiting from; the information will be sent from the server that’s geographically closest.
Tools to measure my loading speed
There are many tools to measure the loading speed of your site, although most offer good reports, I recommend using the one offered by Google in its Google Webmaster Tools application , it offers very reliable results in addition to being able to compare the performance of your site over different periods of time.
Conclusion How important is
Your site’s loading speed is a determining factor in your users’ experience ; it also has a direct impact on the time they spend on your website and the conversions you achieve. It’s worth investing time and resources into improving it.