8 Issues That Slow Your Website (Solutions)

The efficiency of your website is one of the most crucial parts of your digital presence. As a result, you must address any issues that may be causing your website to slow down.

Many businesses rely on having a website to succeed. Slow-loading websites lose 53% of their traffic, and the company loses one out of every three visits.

Let’s have a look at some of the things that can help improve your site’s performance, and the things that might slow them down and how to fix them.

The Problems with Slow-Loading Websites and How to Solve Them

1.??Ineffective Hosting Service

To make your website available on the internet, you’ll need to use a hosting service.

When you enter your website address into a browser, the web host delivers it up from their own server.

Several web hosting services outperform others. If you choose a less expensive web hosting service, slow load times may cost you, valuable consumers.

Solution: Invest in a reliable hosting service

If your hosting service works poorly and takes too long to load, your website’s valuable paying consumers may leave your website. Increasing your hosting budget is the key to ensuring that users will receive speedy page load times.

2.??Too Many Elements Exists

You’re probably aware that images and videos take up far more space than text, code, stylesheets, and other static assets. A single image may provide more information than dozens of website pages composed entirely of HTML and text.

When you have more elements on your page, it will take longer to load. If all of your pages load slowly – then this means your website as a whole is running too slowly.

Solution: Reduce unnecessary elements

To make your website load faster – reduce the size and quantity of elements on each page.

Consider whether you can achieve the desired impact with fewer photographs, videos, or other materials. (If you haven’t already, now is the time to optimise your images.)

If you are unsure whether your website has too many elements, conduct a heat map test to observe what users glance at and click on.

For example: If you have an entire page dedicated to your company’s YouTube videos, but the heat map shows that only a quarter of them are being clicked on, you may want to remove the ones that aren’t being seen.

3.??There's no content delivery network

Your website may take a long time to load if you do not use a content delivery network (CDN).

A CDN’s job is to serve your website to users based on their location. When you employ a CDN in conjunction with your website’s server, the user will be able to access your site considerably faster.

A CDN also ensures that a user receives your website from a location near them. Because the data does not have to travel as far between the user’s computer and your server – ensuring your site loads faster.

For example: when you open a webpage in your browser, the browser must first communicate with the server. It takes longer for your browser and server to communicate without a CDN.

Solution: Enforce CDN

It is one of the most popular ways to speed up your website, and it won't take you long to sign up and get started.

It speeds up each of your pages by displaying a cached version of the page rather than repeatedly delivering the same page. This implies that users may have to wait longer for updates to your page to appear, but at worst, your page will load in a matter of seconds.

4.??Non-optimised images

Images that have a large file size, no alt tag and names that don’t tell you what they are, are not optimised.

When you save an image created in software such as Photoshop, it is saved as a big file. They have a lot of detail and quality – which can cause your website to slow down.

Solution: Optimise images

To avoid this problem, change the size of the photo before adding it to your code.

The most common types of photo files are PNG and JPG, but each has its own use.

If your image needs to be transparent, like a logo, or if you want a more detailed image, you should use a PNG.

On the other hand, PNG files are bigger, so naturally, it takes them longer to load.

JPGs are the most common file type for images online because they load quickly and have smaller file sizes. That makes it easier for your visitors, especially on mobile devices to load them.

5.??High website traffic

High website traffic slows loading.

Even though information travels at the speed of light, websites can only handle so many visitors before it slows down. The capability of a website is determined by its bandwidth.

Broadband connections offer information faster and may accommodate more visitors.

Mbps means megabits per second. This shows how much Internet data is transferred per second.

Solution: Improve bandwidth

High website traffic is a good problem to have—you should welcome it.

However, increasing your bandwidth is the only way to ensure that your site loads promptly.

It’s quite simple. Simply contact your web host and update your plan, which is normally available in TB increments.

6.??Numerous ads

Just like images, videos, and content, take up excessive space on your website.

Allowing others to place advertisements on your website may cause the page to take longer to load.

Ads not only make your page take longer to load, but they also irritate visitors. Even if users do not abandon your site because it takes too long to load, they may do so because of advertisements.

Solution: Get rid of or cut back on third-party ads

If ads are your main source of income, having too many on a page could cost you money. If a page takes too long to load and users see that they're waiting on ads instead of content, they will depart out of frustration.

Keep it to one or two ads per page. This will prevent your page from taking too long to load and retain your customers.

7.??Excessive social sharing buttons

It's important to make it easy for people to share your pages on social media but having too many social sharing buttons can slow down the time it takes for your page to load.?

You have to add these buttons to your site as a plugin for them to work. Every time they are used, they must also first get information from the social media site they are linked to.

For example: if you have a share button for Facebook and Twitter on your website, both sites will get requests for certain information so that the share button will work. It's not a big deal if you only have a few buttons.

But it's not good to have a share button for every social platform.

Solution: Use only platforms that work well

If you know that people don't share your content on Pinterest or Reddit very often, remove the buttons for those sites from your plugin.

Reduce the number of buttons on each page to three or four. That will let you target high-value social networks like Facebook and Twitter without overwhelming your users.

It will also keep your page from loading data from sites that no one visits. People who visit your site won't even notice them.

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8.??Unknown Factors

There are many things that can slow down the speed at which your website loads. That means you need to take a lot of steps to make sure your site loads quickly.

When you have a business to run, you probably don't have time to also optimise a website. And that's all right! There are people who can do it for you and ensure that your website is running at an optimal speed.

Solution: Employ an expert

Hiring a professional is a simple way to speed up how fast your site loads.

Professionals have the time, tools, and know-how to make sure your website loads quickly. They can also give you tips on what you can do to ensure it is running at top speed.

Solve Your Slow Website Issue

If your website is slow to load, Team Elephant can help you out!

Elephant in the Boardroom is a Web Design and Development Agency in Melbourne that can help your website be fast and succeed. We know what it takes to make a good impression on your audience with a professionally designed website that is optimised for leads and conversions.

Get in touch with our Web Design experts in Melbourne and let's start recalibrating your site for success.