You’ve done it. You’ve finished your website. It has video content, beautiful graphics, and blogs full of SEO keywords, all to boost your search results on Google. You’re doing everything right, but your page is slow to load. Now what?
People will never see your site because it takes a one-Mississippi to load. A slow-to-load website can be devastating to your business. In the time it takes to buffer and load, someone’s already hit the back button and is onto the next search result. Your website’s been dismissed before anybody ever saw it.
Page speed is critical in user experience, converting searches to sales, and search engine optimization (SEO).
In a time when the need for immediate gratification has never been more prominent, today’s internet surfer expects pages to load instantaneously. If your site doesn’t, that customer will catch the next wave.
Several factors impact page load speed. If your website is slow to load, here are two quick tips on boosting page load speed.
COMPRESS YOUR IMAGES AND VIDEO
People want beautiful images, and you’ve got them. The only trouble is, all those high-resolution images take forever to load. There are two factors to address here: a) the size of each image and b) the number of pictures or videos loading simultaneously.
You need to address both of these issues by reducing the file size of all images and videos. Before you upload that full-size image, be sure to resize it first. If an image is going to display at 400 pixels, don’t upload it at 4,000.
JPGs are your friend. A JPG is a compressed image that still retains the integrity of the image. A JPG won’t become blurry or pixelate when it’s compressed. How do you know if you’re using JPGs or not? When you look a the file name of the image you’re uploading, it will end with a period followed by a few letters. If those letters are JPG, you’re all set. If those letters are TIFF, BMP, PNG, then you’ve found one of the culprits slowing down your page.
Have you compressed all the photos on your page? Even if an image is the correct size for a space, it should still be compressed. Compressed files are faster to load and won’t impact image quality.
If you’re exporting an image from a program like Photoshop, there’s a “save for web” option that will compress the image for you when it saves.
You’ve probably heard that video is a great way to drive people to your website and improve your search ranking on Google. And this is true. Video content is a great way to bring people to your website, keep them there, and sell a product. The only problem is, video can be slow to load. Especially high-definition videos.
The same rule for images applies to videos: compress them all.
Another trick is to limit the number of images and videos on a single page. The more things that need to load, the longer it will take. The idea is to strike a balance between user experience and website design.
Have you ever been to an Ikea? Ikea’s are designed so you have to walk through the entire store before you can leave. Even if you’re running in for a single item and know exactly where it is, you still need to go through the maze. Because, undoubtedly, a set of hangers or dish rack will catch your eye on your way out, and you’ll buy something else.
A website can do the same thing. You don’t need all your images and graphics on the homepage. Guide people through your site with CTA buttons and hyperlinks, so they’ll discover things along the way.
FIX BROKEN LINKS
Have you had the experience of visiting a website, finding precisely what you’re looking for, clicking on the link, only to be taken to a page that says, “404 Error?” What do you do when that happens?
If this happens to one of your customers when visiting your website, they’re going to do the same thing you do: go to someone else’s website.
An easy way to ensure that your pages are all working is to click on them. Go through your website.
If you owned a restaurant, you might ask your friends to go in for dinner one night to test the guest experience, so they can tell you how the food tasted and if the service was up to par. Owning a website is no different. The good news is, you can check these things yourself because your website doesn’t know the boss is having dinner at table six and needs five-star service.
For websites with hundreds of pages, there are programs you can download to regularly test the pages, such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider and Ahrefs. There’s no reason you can’t use both of those or similar programs to double-check the work. When they all come back with zero broken links, you know you’re good to go.
Many factors can slow download times, but compressing images/video and fixing broken links are two quick fixes you can make on your own.
If you’ve made these adjustments and are still having problems, talk to a web developer like fusionZONE Automotive. An experienced web developer can look at factors such as minimizing HTTP requests, using a CDN, configuring server settings, putting CSS at the top and JS at the bottom, etc.
For a diagnostic of your website, get in touch with fusionZONE Automotive today!