A company’s website is the first way that a potential customer will interact with your business. If your website fails to load in an acceptable amount of time, you might be losing countless customers despite having some of the best products on the market.
But what is an acceptable amount of time? The page speed on your site should actually take about three seconds or less. Some sources claim that as many as 40% of customers will abandon a website if the screen takes any longer than that to load. And that includes mobile searches, which is also becoming an increasingly important way that customers are finding your business online. If your website isn’t streamlined to meet your customer’s needs then you could be losing customers left and right.
Improving your website’s speed is just one way that a computer design and development company, like Design By Volta (found at designbyvolta.com), is helping online businesses turn cold leads into hot sales. Whether you’re a purely online store or a locally-owned and operated business, having a fast load time is essential. Along with beautiful website design, here are some of the top ways that you can speed up your website’s load time.
Look at your images.
Images are important for any reputable website. Not only do they help catch the eye of your customers but they can be great in terms of making your content more shareable across the web. Unfortunately, images that are too big can slow down your site and prevent it from loading in a time frame that works for your clients.
Your images need to be internet-friendly if you want your website to load quickly. That means you should be relying on smaller images or reducing the overall number you use on your site. A good compromise is to include one image on each page of your website, but eliminate featured images on your blog roll. Images throughout the post can help, but featured images might prevent the actual blog page from loading properly from the start. Keep in mind that you should also be using PNG images for graphics while JPG or JPEG images are better for photographs. If you really can’t bear the thought of cutting back on your photos, you can always start a social media page where these images are viewed more anyway.
Avoid redirects at all costs.
If you have an old website that redirects to your new one, that’s one thing; but if your current site relies on a series of different hosting platforms or new URL locations, that’s another issue. Your main website should try to keep one URL throughout the site if you want it to run quickly. Not only does loading an entirely new site slow down the user experience but it also adds latency to your main site. If linking to another source is vital for the operation of your business, Google recommends keeping this number as low as possible. More than one redirect to a given source can frustrate users and cause even more speed issues for your site.
Rely on a web design company for help.
If you have followed the above steps and your website is still taking a long time to load, it’s best to rely on the help of a quality web design company, like Design By Volta, for help. These media gurus can take a look at your website’s code, identify further problems that are slowing your web pages’ speed, and correct them. They can also prevent similar issues like these from happening again in the first place. If you’re stuck trying to fiddle with your web page to no avail, it’s important to rely on the professionals.
After all, it might boil down to a problem with your server or the company that you have chosen to host your website. For example, sites like Wix are great for people who are just starting out since they are intuitive and easy to use on the part of their creators. However, these template websites are no good when you want to scale your business. Investing in a custom-built website will help ensure that you’re able to scale your site along with the rest of your business. Since it’s hands-off on your end, this option couldn’t be easier.