{"id":4337,"date":"2019-04-26T15:25:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T15:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com/blog\/?p=4337"},"modified":"2023-12-20T13:41:51","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T11:41:51","slug":"i-optimized-website-still-running-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/i-optimized-website-still-running-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"I Have Optimized My Website, but It’s Still Running Slow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Google<\/a>In January 2018, Google made the momentous announcement that mobile search algorithms will take page load speed into account starting July 2018. According to Google, the site speed<\/a> is a crucial touchstone for the algorithmic site ranking purpose, and Google meticulously charts the site\u2019s loading span. Google does this for a simple reason: if search engine crawlers take too much time to access pages, they give up on you, and your pages don\u2019t get indexed properly.<\/p>\n

Experienced SEO strategists know that visibility, credibility, and brand awareness<\/a> are critical goals for any business, and the site\u2019s user-friendliness and ability to deliver a great user experience are vital for achieving the three goals. Because of Google\u2019s growing emphasis on user experience, companies can no longer ignore SEO best practices<\/a>, one of which is site speed.<\/p>\n

When it comes to site speed, consider these 4 inputs:<\/h4>\n

– It takes a high-end sports car roughly 3 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph, and that\u2019s all the time visitors allow a page to load.
\n– Even if you\u2019re loading in 3 seconds, customer satisfaction is down by 16%<\/a>, and you\u2019re likely to suffer a 7% loss in conversions.
\n– If loading takes 4 seconds, you\u2019re likely to face a 25% spike in page abandonment, and you\u2019ll be rated poorly for user experience.
\n– Retailing giants like Amazon and Walmart found that fast-loading pages improved sales, and every 100 milliseconds of additional loading time costs the company a 1% dip in sales.<\/p>\n

So, if grandpa is moving faster than your website, you\u2019ve got a king size problem that reflects poorly on your results.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done everything possible to optimize my page, but it\u2019s still too slow\u201d<\/h6>\n

\"Slow<\/a>The problem starts at the stage of conceptualizing the website. You\u2019re so focused on the design, the presentation, and the layout of the site that you tend to ignore how you\u2019re performing at the backend level.
\nThe other issue is that Google is more focused on giving users the best search results, and your slow-loading site won\u2019t look pretty hogging space in top page rankings.
\nThere you have it \u2013 an inefficient backend job and Google\u2019s insistence on topnotch loading speed are relegating your slow-moving site to the graveyard of invisibility. As far as potential customers are concerned, you\u2019ve ceased to exist.<\/p>\n

Consider the following drawbacks and assess where you stand<\/h4>\n

– You haven\u2019t enabled the URL redirect function, and visitors are being redirected to no man\u2019s land.
\n– Your typography is off base: you need to break the tyranny of text and create a visual flow in a page to make it SERP-friendly.
\n– You haven\u2019t prioritized visible content: the content above the fold that the visitor sees at the entry point doesn\u2019t capture or fulfill the visitor\u2019s intent.
\n– Mobile users have a viewport issue with your site: users see only a tiny font on their mobiles and need to zoom and scroll up and down, which becomes annoying.
\n– The script you\u2019re using is in a synchronous version: the problem is that once a function is called, the program waits for one code to finish before tackling the next code lining up in sequence. This slows down the rendering of any page.
\n– JavaScript and CSS resources are blocking above the fold content from displaying quickly: Google PageSpeed Insights will help you reduce or eliminate such render-blocking scripts.<\/p>\n

3 Steps to load web pages faster than a Ferrari – in less than 3 seconds<\/h4>\n

\"site<\/a>Before we go around tinkering with the site\u2019s speed statistics, you need to base your action plan on what you know about your typical customer. Knowing the visitor is important. Google Analytics is a great starting point for researching your customer. Find the content on your site that hooks customers, then probe where they\u2019re browsing from and from which device or platform they\u2019re keying in. This kind of data helps us flesh out the following action plan.<\/p>\n

1. Sorting out the image conundrum through file compression<\/h5>\n

Visit any website, and you\u2019ll be inundated with images and graphics of a mind-numbing variety. These visuals are necessary to display, explain, and convey specific messages targeting the visitor. But the very same images tend to slow down the site\u2019s loading speed.
\nImagine you\u2019re a travel blogger avidly taking snaps with your digital camera and loading them directly on your blog. Each snap that isn\u2019t downsized or optimized beforehand uses up at least 3 to 4MB of additional space. This means that it will take a long time for mobile users to download your page.<\/p>\n

The good news is that you don\u2019t need to waste substantial dollars hiring the best web designers and developers to optimize images \u2013 the net is awash with tools that are free and easy to use. Some of these services do a neat job compressing the most complex images without compromising the picture\u2019s quality. The images will be cropped and styled, stripped of unwanted data, and reduced to a manageable file.<\/p>\n

2. Controlling add-ons, reducing file bloat, and limiting HTTP requests<\/h5>\n

Other than images, there are features such as JavaScript elements, CSS files, style sheets, and externally sourced media items that can slow loading speeds. These elements together influence 80% of the page load time. The visitor\u2019s browser has to make an HTTP request for each component individually, and this eats time. So, the more components that appear on a page, the more time the page takes to render.<\/p>\n

To grapple this issue, you need to figure out how many requests each page is generating. Let\u2019s assume the end user is using Google Chrome. Open Chrome\u2019s Browser Developer Tools<\/a> and click the \u201cinspect\u201d and \u201cnetwork\u201d tabs. You get neat tabulated data that names the files, shows the size of the file, and mentions the time it takes to make an HTTP request for each file.<\/p>\n

Here, it becomes easier to identify and remove the files that are dragging down your loading speed. Even seemingly innocuous widgets like the Google+ button and the Facebook box can add a 40+ HTTP request burden which is not ideal.<\/p>\n

Creating the right ambiance and enhancing the user experience for the visitor demands the use of add-ons, plugins, and third-party scripts, but all these features take a heavy toll on website speed. These scripts are implementing their predesigned functions and gathering information regarding each visitor. This could bloat the site and make it perform sluggishly. Internal conflicts and plugin errors add to the problems.<\/p>\n

3. CDN – the smart answer to hosting media-rich content<\/h5>\n

\"fast<\/a>Images and videos are the heavier elements that burden the server and hosting them on your private server may not be the most efficient way to improve load speed. If your organic traffic is bouncing off slow-loading pages, your cost of hosting will be further stressed. As a solution, you could consider shifting to a CDN or Content Delivery Network, which is tailor-made for hosting media-rich content at an affordable cost.<\/p>\n

Consider a service such as Amazon CloudFront<\/a> that is integrated with AWS. The immediate benefit is that your data, videos, applications, and APIs get delivered to customers wherever they may be, with lower latency, and with faster speeds. For example, a visitor based in Washington receives a copy of the file hosted on an American server, and the same applies to servers in locations elsewhere on the globe, thus creating faster load times.<\/p>\n

Another new service that take care of everything image related is ShortPixel Adaptive Images<\/a>. Short Pixel Adaptive Images uses a CDN service with a global presence and provides fully optimized pictures for best performance use on your website. It’s a fully convenient and simple way to optimize all of your site’s images with just a few clicks. This open source plugin saves you a lot of trouble and time.<\/p>\n

Enabling website caching effectively reduces the time a page takes to load on the server. Through browser caching, a website\u2019s resource files can be stored on a user\u2019s local computer so that on a subsequent visit the server doesn\u2019t struggle to compute the page the visitor prefers. This enhances the end-user experience.<\/p>\n

Through caching, the user\u2019s browser remembers the website\u2019s logo, CSS files, and features that were loaded on the first visit, avoiding the need to reload all these elements. For this reason, each repeated visit takes lesser time to load and enhances the user experience. After enabling caching, the webmaster needs to guide the browser in tapping into the website\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h6>\n

A fast loading website is of critical importance when you\u2019re focused on SEO optimization<\/a>. It\u2019s vital because visitors are coming to you with high expectations, and if you\u2019re not faster than a Ferrari, you risk losing potential customers, loyal clients, and a healthy revenue stream.<\/p>\n

Your goal should be to deliver a seamless browsing experience that encourages the visitor to stay with you, commit to you, and develop a relationship. Improving your website speed is one of the ways you can stand out from the crowd and be seen as the best in the game.<\/p>\n

Obviously, there are many ways to boost your speed statistics but what we\u2019ve outlined is a checklist highlighting the best and most effective options that you ignore at your peril. Never sacrifice speed for the sake of looks and styling. You could design the most beautiful and awe-inspiring pages with mind-blowing images, but your site could sink like a brick, instead of sail like a fast boat. Speed makes a huge difference. Period.<\/p>\n

Author\u2019s bio<\/strong>: Joseph Harisson (Josh) has 10 years of experience in the IT industry as a web developer and cloud computing expert researching extensively for techendo.com<\/a>. He frequently writes about IT and branding efforts. In his free time, you will often find him taking a walk, or playing video games.<\/p>\n

Image 1 by Gerd Altmann from pixabay.com<\/span>
\nImage 2 Clker-Free-Vector-Images from pixabay.com<\/span>
\nImage 3 gusaap from pixabay.com<\/span>
\nImage 4 by rawpixel.com from pexels.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January 2018, Google made the momentous announcement that mobile search algorithms will take page load speed into account starting July 2018. According to Google, the site speed is a crucial touchstone for the algorithmic site ranking purpose, and Google meticulously charts the site\u2019s loading span. Google does this for a simple reason: if search […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-of-wordpress"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4337"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9351,"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions\/9351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortpixel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}