Top Reasons Why A Website Loads Slowly

Who doesn’t love a fast-loading website? Not me! With so many new web development strategies and high speed internet connections today, web users certainly expect websites to load fast so that they can have the best user experience on your website.

Since 2010, we have heard from Google that your site speed can even help to determine web search rankings so you should know even Big Brother is obsessed with speed. Most internet users expect a website to load in 2 seconds so if your website is taking long than that, you might be losing out on traffic as they head off elsewhere. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to check your website’s speed, but do you know what is causing the slow loading speed? Well, here are your answers:

Bad Web Hosting

One of the main culprits for a slow website is actually the web hosting service you are using to host your website. If you want to run a decent size website, you have to be careful about going for the shared hosting option. Instead, you should invest in using VPS or a dedicated server.

Images That are Not Optimized

The most probable reason for a slow loading website stems from having too many large images that are not optimized. This will slow down your site speed to a large extent and is definitely one of the main steps you have to take to speed up your website. You can use an image compression tool such as Kraken web interface to help.

Lack of Web Page Compression

If you want to have a speedy site, you have to perform web page compression so that your pages take up less storage space as well as use less bandwidth. One of the best solutions for web page compression is to enable GZIP compression via htaccess or at the server level.

Using a Dynamic Website

If you are running a dynamic website, which means that your site generates your web pages from database storage, you can definitely expect a slower loading speed than a simple HTML website. Such server intensive dynamic sites should use caching so that frequently accessed dynamic files can be accessed quickly.

Running Bulky Code

If you are running bulky code, you are risking a slower website speed because your files are larger and therefore take longer to load. Some ways to avoid bulky code include:

• Use CSS shortcuts and write efficient code
• Avoid inline styles
• Remove those unnecessary whitespace
• Avoid using a table-based layout and opt for a CSS/DIV based layout

Flash Overload

Although using flash is a nice way to attract attention for your traffic, it requires way too many resources and causes your website to load slower. The best advice is to avoid using flash, but if you have to then consider using XML to load external data.

Spam on Your Website

All webmasters know how irritating spam can be and guess what, it might even be slowing down your website! There are many options for spam-prevention that you can take, o make sure that you spam proof your website.

Now that you know the top reasons that your website might load slowly, it is time to turn things around and streamline the user experience for your visitors. Here at SmartSites, when it comes to page speed optimization, no job is too small or too big for us. You can count on us to make your website go from a rickshaw to a Ferrari!