Count to three. That’s exactly how many seconds it takes to lose a potential customer if your website isn’t performing as expected. Unfortunately, the age-old saying “slow and steady wins the race” is no longer relevant. 

Site loading speed is crucial to your online success. Clients don’t want to wait for anything these days and lost visitors are lost profits. Therefore, speed optimization is crucial to your performance and growth. 

Let’s discuss the common causes of slow site speed and some effective ways to fix the issues. 

Is Your Website Running Slow? 

Site speed is one of the most crucial components of a successful marketing plan. However, it’s common for business owners, bloggers, web developers, and anyone else with a website to experience slow loading speed. 

The good news is that the cause of your slow site speed can typically be fixed with the help of a professional web development company. This article will discuss some of the most common causes of a sluggish site, how to fix them, and the benefits of speed optimization services. Let’s jump right in! 

8 Reasons Your Website Is Slow

Optimize Images

Slow-loading websites are a recipe for failure, especially for businesses that rely on their website to gather leads or sell products and services. Here are some of the top reasons your website is slow:

1. Unoptimized Images

When your website had a large volume of unoptimized images, it can affect your website speed. High-resolution images consume a lot of bandwidth, especially while loading. There are several things to consider when it comes to speed optimization in regards to your images.

It is common practice for many website owners to upload larger images before scaling them down on their site. This unnecessarily increased the size of your website and results in loading speed issues. 

Another thing to consider is the format of your images. For example, JPEG images are smaller in size than formats like PNG or GIFs. Therefore, your web page will load faster if you choose formats like JPEG over larger images like PNG/GIF. 

Speed Optimization Tips for Images

If you want to fix issues with unoptimized images, consider the following steps:

  • Check the file size of your images. Anything above 1MB should be compressed before being added to your website. 
  • Choose JPEG instead of PNG, especially for larger images. PNGs should be reserved for images that require transparency, like a logo. 
  • Make sure all images are equipped with alt tags. 
  • Use descriptive file names. 
  • When you resize an image, be sure to keep the ratio intact. Failing to do so can distort the visual and impact image quality. 

Media content and images can waste valuable server storage space and slow down your website. There are several free tools online to help optimize images or you can hire a professional speed optimization service to ensure you get the best results. 

2. JavaScript Issues

The introduction of JavaScript and jQuery plugins have made it convenient to add dynamic content to your website. However, JavaScript issues can be incredibly damaging to your page load speed when implemented incorrectly. 

Today, most interactive sites are written in JavaScript. Without optimization, JavaScript can negatively impact your SEO results. Since it takes time for jQuery and JavaScript to be loaded and interpreted, using multiple API calls to render data can significantly impact your loading speed. 

Resolve JavaScript Issues with the Following Tips

  • Take frequent inventory of your site to see what you really need. Remove any JavaScript scripts that aren’t required for your website. 
  • Consider switching to a single script for all your tools. 
  • Hire a speed optimization service to refactor your JS code. They will remove all redundant calculations and actions that may impact site speed. 
  • Use asynchronous script loading. 

When it comes to JavaScript issues, it’s best to hire a website development company to handle the work. Resolving JavaScript issues and implementing speed optimization tactics related to these can be tricky unless you have professional development experience. 

3. Excessive HTTP Requests

Speed Optimization Services

When the backend of your website has loads of JavaScript, CSS, and image files, you’ll end up with too many HTTP requests. This means that when a user visits your website, their browser is forced to perform several requests to load your website files. Excessive HTTP requests can significantly reduce page speed. So, how do you fix this without changing the design and layout of your website? 

Speed Optimization Tips for Excessive HTTP Requests

If your site speed issues come from excessive HTTP requests, it’s vital to take action. 

  • Use a third-party service to reduce HTTP requests. 
  • Talk to your web development company to reduce the number of files on your pages where possible. This should include CSS, images, JavaScript, etc. 
  • Reduce the total number of CSS and JavaScript files your users need to download. 

The good news is that you can significantly reduce the number of HTTP requests your website requires with a little time and effort. Hire a professional site speed optimization service to help get the results you need for better SEO results. 

4. Too Many Ads

Online advertisements are undoubtedly a great way to monetize high-traffic websites. In today’s increasingly competitive business world, you simply can’t do without advertising. However, it’s crucial to avoid excessive advertising. Too many banner ads can drastically increase your site’s load time. 

Don’t let excessive advertising come at the cost of compromised website performance and user experience. Unfortunately, too many ads can create additional HTTP requests on your website, requiring additional processing time. Rich media ads such as pop-ups and automatic downloads can even become so burdensome that they make your website unresponsive. 

Even worse, ads can be annoying to your website users, leading to higher bounce rates. Plus, having an overabundance of website ads just looks tacky in 2022. Limiting the number of advertisements on your website can ensure better website performance and help with speed optimization. 

How to Handle Website Ads

If ads are decreasing your site speed and increasing bounce rates, you’ll lose valuable customers who would likely bring you more revenue than the ads themselves. 

  • If you need ad revenue to survive, limit your ads to one or two per page. This will keep your page loading faster and help keep bounce rates low. 
  • Eliminate advertising if it significantly impacts performance and UX. 
  • Get rid of pop-up banners and auto-playing or downloading media content altogether.

Although website ads can be a lucrative way to bring in revenue, they often cost website owners valuable leads. Keep your advertising at a minimum to reduce the impact these have on your site speed and overall user experience. 

5. Bad Hosting

Your hosting provider is not only necessary to displace your site, but it is also vital to your website’s success. When users type your URL into a browser, it’s your web host that delivers your actual website to your viewers. What most website owners don’t realize is that not all hosting providers are created equal. 

Some web hosting services are better than others. As with most things in life, if you choose a cheaper hosting package, you get what you pay for and risk losing valuable customers due to low site speed and downtime. 

Web hosting service makes a huge difference when it comes to website performance. Professionally managed hosting should offer performance and speed optimization services. While they might be at an additional cost, you should be able to get everything from one provider. If most of the other common site speed issues have been resolved, it’s probably time to look at your hosting provider. 

Don’t Let Bad Hosting Slow Your Site Down

With so many reliable web hosting companies in Vancouver, slow-loading websites shouldn’t be a thing. 

  • Evaluate your hosting service. 
  • If your hosting is negatively impacting your site speed, it’s a good idea to spend a little more money on a good hosting service. This will also give you invaluable peace of mind that your website is readily accessible when needed. 
  • Talk to your hosting provider about the type of server they are using. Make sure it is suitable for all types of sites and web applications. 

Having reliable and effective website hosting is crucial to your online success. Your web hosting service provider makes a huge difference when it comes to performance. Talk to your hosting provider to discuss your options and find a resolution in regards to slow site speed. 

6. No Content Delivery Network

A content delivery network or CDN is a distributed network of independent servers deployed in different geographic locations. This network allows your web content to be displayed to visitors with high availability and performance. Depending on your visitor’s geographic location, the requested content is served by the node located at the nearest available data center. This helps minimize round-trip time and serve content in a must quicker fashion. 

If you don’t have a content delivery network, you may have a website that loads slowly. When you open your website in a browser, the browser needs to communicate with the server first to open it. Since CDN data has a shorter distance to travel between the user and your server, it undoubtedly helps your site load more quickly. Without a CDN, the communication between the browser and server can take longer. 

Implement a CDN to Enhance Site Speed

While CDNs are not mandatory, they can significantly improve your website speed. Therefore, implementing a CDN is a vital component of any speed optimization strategy. 

  • CDN caches frequently accessed data in geographically distributed data centers, increasing overall website speed for users. 
  • Since a CDN minimizes round-trip time, you can serve content to your audience faster with a reliable CDN. 
  • There are many different CDN systems available to meet your needs. For example, Cloudflare offers affordable options to render your website from servers worldwide. 

Since many webmasters download jQuery from CDN servers, implementing a CDN can also reduce resource waste to improve processing. Talk to your website development company to integrate a CDN during your new site development or revamp. 

7. High Website Traffic with Low Bandwidth

Page Loading Speed

High website traffic can easily slow down your website’s loading speed. Although information moves quickly online, websites can only accommodate a certain number of visitors based on their bandwidth. If there is low bandwidth, a significant amount of visitors can slow down your site substantially. 

Bandwidth refers to how much information an Internet connection can handle in a given time. Most commercial businesses deploy larger bandwidths that are referred to as broadband. This helps deliver information more quickly and accommodate more visitors to your site. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, typically have a lower bandwidth, which can limit the information transferred through your Internet connection. 

In the business world, high traffic is a good problem to have. You should welcome a high level of traffic to your website and even take steps to increase website traffic. The more the merrier, right? But when it comes to speed optimization, you’ll want to have ample bandwidth to accommodate your website traffic. So, what can you do? 

Increase Bandwidth to Accommodate Significant Website Traffic

The only solution to keep your site loading quickly with high traffic is to increase your bandwidth. 

  • Contact your site host to discuss your options. 
  • Update your plan to include additional TB increments based on your needs. 
  • If increasing your bandwidth is outside of your budget, discuss speed optimization techniques that can help reduce your bandwidth in other ways. For example, optimizing images can help reduce your overall bandwidth. 

While you may need to make adjustments as your business and online audience grow, most reliable web development companies will recommend a plan with ample bandwidth during the development phase. Talk to your web development company to discuss your options and take effective measures towards increasing your website speed. 

8. Overloaded Database

Excess data can be another issue that slows down your website speed. This is common for websites that have been live for a significant time. In these cases, useless data is more of a problem than anything. For example, information stored from WordPress plugins can remain in your database after a plug-in is removed. 

As your database continues to grow, it slows down your website and impacts its overall performance. In some cases, your database can increase by several gigabytes. This can increase your page load time by as much as 10 seconds or more. If you are working on speed optimization, you need to periodically clean and optimize your database. 

Clean Your Website Database to Increase Site Speed

As a rule of thumb, it’s always best to hire a reliable Vancouver web development company to set up and optimize your database. 

  • Routine database cleaning and optimization should be a mandatory requirement of your website maintenance plan. 
  • Make sure your SEO team removes unnecessary records from the options and post metatables. 
  • If you are using WordPress, consider activating the Clean Options of Plugin Garbage Collector plugins. 
  • Keep a close eye on the structure of your database. 
  • Cache popular queries. 
  • When possible, avoid using Flash files. Flash files are consistently bulky in size and can significantly slow your website speed. They are also no longer relevant. 

If maintenance isn’t part of your website package, consider adding one-time database optimization services to help with speed optimization. 

9. Not Using gZIP Compression

WordPress Speed Optimization

gZIP compression instructs the server to wrap all web objects into a single container before they are sent to the requesting browser. This includes images, CSS, JavaScript files, and others, which can slow down page loading speed when being rendered separately. 

Compressing website files lowers response time overall by reducing the size of the data that is transferred between your server and the visitor’s browser. This allows content to be delivered much faster. Oversized components can typically be the primary reason your site is slow. gZIP compressor is an easy and simple solution with no downsides. 

Create a Simple Fix with gZIP Compression

If you’re looking for a quick and easy fix for speed optimization, make sure you’re using gZIP compression. 

  • gZIP compression is an easy win to improve website performance. 
  • It wraps all your web objects into a single container and decreases the amount of time it takes to deliver web objects. 

If you have experience with website development, you can enable gZIP compression on your own. However, it’s a simple and affordable solution even if you need to hire someone. 

Advantages of Speed Optimization Services

Speed Optimization Strategy

There are several advantages to investing in speed optimization services. The correlation between website speed and user experience is clear. Today’s average user simply doesn’t want to wait around for a website to load. The faster users can find what they’re looking for, the happier they are and the quicker they’ll be to purchase your products and services. 

Online shopping is more demanding than ever. Consumers continue to have smaller attention spans and people don’t want to wait for a website that loads slowly. This is even more true for mobile users. If your website is slow, your user experience takes a hit. Ultimately, this means you lose potential customers to competitors who can deliver a better experience. 

In similar regard, speed optimization increases conversion rates. Online businesses depend on visitors to purchase products and services. Visitors are more likely to complete an action if your website works the way they expect, whether you sell eBooks that need to be downloaded or build your customer base with email collections. 

A slow website will kill your conversion rates, reducing sales and negatively impacting your revenue overall. If you want to maximize sales and meet your goals, you need a fast website. If your page loading times lag, investing in speed optimization services will bring you a significant return on your investment. 

Finally, your page speed impacts your search engine rankings. In 2018, Google announced that page speed would be a ranking factor in Google Search and mobile searches. This is one of the areas where speed optimization services can significantly improve your website traffic. 

Slow site speed impacts pages per session, average session duration, and bounce rates. Therefore, slow loading times can negatively impact your SEO results. Even if your page speed isn’t directly impacting your SEO results, it impacts the user experience which does impact SEO. 

Hire a Professional Web Development Company for Results-Driven Speed Optimization Services

Your website page load speed depends on several factors, including unoptimized images, JavaScript issues, and bad hosting. While it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of slow page loading speed, it’s clear that speed optimization services can benefit your online results overall. 

No matter the root cause of your slow site speed, it’s crucial to identify the issue and fix it as quickly as possible. Failing to do so can result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue. At BragDeal, our team will help you improve page loading speeds and enhance your online presence and user experience. 

Every second makes a difference with site speed. Don’t let the first impression of your business be centered on slow page loading times. Optimize your website with speed optimization services and prioritize your website’s performance today. Contact our Vancouver search engine optimization team to discuss your project and learn more. 

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