Often times internet marketers go to all the trouble of having great sales copy, a great process like email sign-ups, and so on. What’s the one thing they forget? Their website speed. No matter how good your website is, if it loads slowly you are costing yourself sales.
People aren’t willing to wait forever. The load time is one of the main things that impacts the site’s overall usability.
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Studies have shown that if a site takes more than 4 seconds to load, the visitor will leave.[/tweet_box]
You don’t have long to capture people’s attention. Therefore, if you don’t succeed immediately it won’t get done.
And load time helps with SEO as well. Many people don’t realize this, but it’s true. This is because performance is one of the variables the search engines use in their algorithm to rank sites. It might not make a huge difference. However, it does impact your rankings some.
So now that you know the importance of having a fast loading site, how do you speed things up? Here are five tips that work:
#1) Eliminate every image you can
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Images are one of the biggest reasons sites take a long time to load. Therefore, eliminate the ones you don’t need. If it doesn’t enhance the look and feel of the site, get rid of it.[/tweet_box]#2) Shrink your images
Big images slow things down. So after you’ve done the first step, you need to make your remaining images smaller.
Do the same for other content.
Getting rid of all unnecessary content is key for speeding up your site. Many sites contain lots of filler content that could easily be gotten rid of. This could mean pictures, videos, and so on – not simply written content.
#3) Declutter the code
Getting rid of unnecessary line breaks and other things in the code will help your site to load faster. Again, this might not make a huge difference, but every little bit counts.
#4) Get a good host
Your site can’t perform to its optimum if it has a bad hosting company. The majority of hosting firms are good enough for sites that don’t get a lot of visitors.
However, it’s when your traffic increases that you will notice a difference. When your site starts to slow down, try changing hosting plans or companies. You might find your speed issues disappear altogether.
#5) Eliminate unnecessary widgets
Often when you put something on your site like AdSense or a Twitter feed, you will see a slowdown. Therefore, test the site with and without it, and see how much of a difference it makes. If it slows things down dramatically, and it’s not increasing your profits, you will probably want to get rid of it.
The bottom line is, there are a number of steps you can take to increase your site speed. Implement these five tips and you will see results soon.
