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The speed of your website; how quickly people can access it, how quickly your site loads, how quickly the pages load, it’s all important to your website success.
Reason One: Google cares about the speed of your website
Google don’t want people hanging around while your website page is taking 15 seconds to load. It wants your pages to be loaded quickly, ideally under 5 seconds but preferably under 3. If not, it may well be that your website is going to rank lower than your competitors because frankly, it's too slow.
Reason Two: Patience
People don't have the patience to sit around while your website cranks away trying to load the pages. People want to see your website, your information, your products, your services, and whatever else is on your website quickly. You need to make sure your website is working as quickly as possible.
The truth is there's lots of things that can quicken up and slow down your website, some of it is more complex than others, but let’s look at 4 simple things that you can do to speed up your website.
1/ Images
It’s important that the images on your website are compressed and they are scaled correctly. In other words, if you put an image on the site that's not the size that it should be (too big), and it's not scaled correctly, then that's going to slow the website down.
If your images are not compressed because you have put them in at their absolute maximum size, when the page is trying to load, the lack of compression and the wrong scaled images are going to slow the website down as it tries to load them. So, you've got to make sure that first thing you do is:
If not, the page is going to load slowly.
Also, consider the number of images and videos that you've got on your website. We all want images and videos on, but we've got to make sure that we're putting them on there with purpose, because they're going to achieve something, not just for the sake of it, because that's not going to help.
2/ Hosting
Second thing you need to be aware of is the hosting/server that your website is on. Truth is, if you cut costs when it comes to your hosting you may well pay the price. If you choose to slum it on some cheap and nasty server somewhere, then your website is going to be slow. Make sure you have good quality hosting; this is important. There are thousands of companies out there that offer good quality hosting (you can even speak to us about hosting if your site's struggling), just make sure you've got quick hosting because this is key when it comes to the speed of your website.
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3/ Caching
This is little bit more complex, but let’s introduce you to caching because this is vital when it comes to the speed of your website.
What caching does is remembers results; it remembers the code within your page. So, when someone comes to your website and they appear on a page, it remembers all the code that's in there. Then, when people click on that particular page, what it does is remember the information, therefore, it loads instantaneously. If the caching is not in place, then every time somebody goes on a page it’s having to search the page from scratch which it will try do quickly, but it will not happen as quickly without caching.
So, make sure you have caching working properly on your website, honestly, it's going to operate a lot, lot quicker. Not only that it's going to please Google, it's going to please your clients, and therefore it’s going to please you!
Make sure caching is on. This is often something that business owners don't know about, don't check, and therefore wonder why the site is a little bit too slow.
4/ Plugins
Most WordPress websites will use plugins, but it’s important that you use them when you really need them and not just for the sake of it. Don't just fill a website full of plugins, because it will slow your website down. Yes, if you want to use plugins, that's fine, in fact we recommend that you do use plugins, however:
So be careful and be wary about plugins that you use, making sure they're the right plugins, or that the plugins are good enough for the purpose (there are some awful ones around), If you don’t then these decisions really can have a negative impact on the speed of your site.
There you have it, 4 things that you can check on to ensure your website is running at maximum speed and meeting the needs of your potential clients who are searching for you online.
Choose Purple are website design agency located just outside Sheffield. If you need help getting better results from your website, then our team are on hand to advise. Simply contact us here.
