Website Performance
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Website performance is a crucial factor for at least two reasons:
1. User Experience – If your website loads too slowly, you’ll lose most of your potential clients who visit through this channel (this is only part of the speed factor as the term User Experience encompasses much more).
2. Search engine perception by Google which has dominated the market in terms of providing high-targeted traffic from people who are currently searching for specific services and products and not people who waste their time or a lazy employer scrolling Facebook but rather people who are looking for your company right now, the one they want to pay for a specific service and product.
It’s more important than ever to address performance challenges related to website efficiency. In this post, we will discuss some common challenges faced by companies:
* Responsiveness
* Overloaded graphics websites
* Cheap slow hosting
* Outdated theme and plugin versions
Some Companies Still Don’t Prioritize Responsive Design
In a more mobile-friendly world, it’s essential for websites to be designed in such a way as to provide an optimal user experience regardless of the device used. However, many companies still don’t prioritize responsive design, which results in them losing valuable opportunities to reach their target audience.
There are several reasons why responsive design is so important. Firstly, more than 60% of people viewing your website do it from a smartphone. If your website isn’t readable on smartphones, you can practically forget about getting any clients from this group. This is just one part of the speed factor as the term User Experience encompasses much more.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s also important in terms of organic traffic from Google because if Google sees that your website isn’t adapted to mobile devices, you can practically say goodbye to free organic traffic from mobile devices.
If your website isn’t currently optimized for responsiveness, now is the time to make it a priority. With so much at stake, you can’t afford to delay further.
Designing Heavy Websites
Many modern websites are overloaded with heavy elements and multimedia that can slow down page loading times. This can be a serious issue, especially for users with slower internet connections. In some cases, it may even make the website completely inaccessible. Unfortunately, mobile devices are again on the priority list of Google and I’m not sure if you’ve ever had the chance to notice being somewhere with your smartphone where there was poor network coverage and when you tried to open a website like Facebook or YouTube – they loaded very slowly and in some cases, couldn’t load at all. Why is this?
In mobile networks, as the signal strength drops, transmission speed drastically decreases. This is why it’s so important for your website not to be overloaded with non-optimized graphical elements to avoid situations where a potential client with 3G coverage (not LTE) can’t access your website and maybe exactly at this moment has decided to buy trekking shoes from you…
Can you afford to lose clients like that who have poor network coverage?
Of course, not.
Here are some things you can do to solve the problem. Firstly, if you’re running an e-commerce site and adding a new product, don’t add high-resolution images or main photos taken with a camera as they can be up to 15 MB in size – too much for a website. Remember that images on your e-commerce site should be of good quality but not necessarily the original format. You can easily optimize such an image using graphics software to a few hundred kilobytes.
Spend some time and do it because if you don’t, you’ll have to spend even more time finding someone else who will.
Hosting Problems
One of the most common problems that can affect website efficiency is poorly configured or even wrong hosting. Unfortunately, this is a very common mistake as people in the IT industry make the same choices when choosing IT services as when buying household appliances… “the cheaper, the better” – unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to the IT industry and will come back to haunt you like a boomerang… sooner or later.
When you realize that “cheap is expensive”, you’ll understand why it’s so important to choose hosting that matches your website’s complexity and most importantly, the traffic you plan to direct towards it. The more traffic you expect, the more efficient your hosting should be.
Is it really worth saving on hosting?
I would say no because when choosing IT services, you need to know exactly what makes something cheaper or more expensive so you can make rational choices that may not seem obvious at first glance like buying a household appliance where regardless of where you buy it, the quality and performance will always be the same. In the case of IT services, this strategy won’t work and may cost you dearly.
Fast hosting is what’s optimized for your website and the traffic you plan to direct towards it.
Outdated Themes and Plugins
Outdated themes and plugins can pose a significant problem for websites, leading to slow loading times, security vulnerabilities, and compatibility issues. To avoid these problems, ensure that your theme and plugins are up-to-date by setting up automatic updates or checking for them regularly. Additionally, use only trusted sources for themes and plugins.
The worst-case scenario is companies using exotic solutions where there’s a limited number of plugins available, infrequent updates, and they’re not free. When building a website, it’s worth choosing the best CMS platform like WordPress (not to be confused with wordpress.com) which gives you access to an endless number of free plugins whose updates are also free but here too, you need to be careful not to use low-quality plugins that may lead to hacker break-ins or slow down your entire website which you’re aware of how it affects customer acquisition.
Slow Website Loading Times Due to Overloaded Graphics
Slow website loading times can be a serious problem as mentioned earlier because they can lead to reduced sales. One of the main reasons for slow loading times is large visual resources such as images and videos. To solve this problem, consider using lighter alternatives for some heavier design elements. Additionally, ensure that all your website files are properly optimized for faster loading.
You can use free tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights to analyze your website’s performance.
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