Does your Website let your digital marketing down?
Web Hosting Blog
You can have the best targeted digital marketing campaign in the world, reaching just the right audience, but if you are directing them to an underperforming website, you will lose and frustrate customers rather than gain them. Research shows that 53% of mobile users will abandon a website if the page does not load within 3 seconds. Almost half of all web users expect pages to load in around 2 seconds. That means no matter how great your digital marketing, or attractive and functionally appealing your site is, no-one will stay around long enough to see it if it does not load quickly. In today’s world, speed and performance in everything.
Performance and Function
Websites should be reviewed for performance and functionality on a regular basis. How often depends on how many plugins you have, how often you update your plugins and how often you add or change content. If you have multiple content contributors, you should consider reviewing your website more frequently to ensure consistency as well.
Speed Bumps
There are several factors affecting the speed with which a website will upload. Some are outside our control, subject to the user’s own internet speed, browser, the computer’s RAM issues and so on, which makes it all the more important to ensure that the factors within our control ARE actually controlled to avoid frustration on the part of the end user. Affecting loading speed is server response time, plugin functionality, image size, scripts and styling, amongst others.
Web Hosting
Server response time has a major impact on page loading speeds, and the type of Web Hosting subscribed to should be matched to the particular needs of the business. Shared web hosting may be adequate for smaller companies with lower site traffic expectations, but for larger companies and e-commerce sites either a Cloud Server or Dedicated Server is strongly recommended to ensure the best loading times. The purpose of your website, the traffic anticipated and the cost of the hosting should all be taken into consideration when selecting a server and a web hosting provider.
Plugins
Web designers love their plugins! Too many plugins, however, will slow website loading. Plugins must also be regularly updated, and redundant ones deactivated or uninstalled to prevent them from slowing everything down. Care must be taken that functionality is not affected by uninstalling plugins, so review functions carefully before going this route.
Images
A key factor affecting the upload time of your website is the type and size of images used. Sliders, for example, or rotating banners, can slow down the loading time of a page quite considerably and should therefore be kept to a minimum. Image format and type of image used also needs to be considered – images should always be optimised, and preferably under 1 MB in size, and in JPEG format rather than PNG or GIF. If you don’t already have a plugin to aid the resizing of images prior to uploading them, consider installing one to ensure consistency of size and format.
FLASH
Too much FLASH content can severely impact your page loading speeds. Whilst FLASH images may appeal, keep them to a minimum to avoid slowing everything down. Alternatives are available and may be worth investigating if you like having these interactive tools but be cautious about over use.
Scripts and Styling
Style coding for the website should come before scripts (instructions on how the website should respond to requests) to aid faster loading of the website, and all coding should be reviewed to ensure that it is kept to a minimum as the format used can have a substantial effect on website loading times. Scripts and styling should be reviewed and updated if you have any concerns about page loading times.
In conclusion, your website may look amazing, but if it takes too long to download, whether on mobile or laptop, your customers will not stick around long enough to appreciate its beauty. If you have reviewed all the above issues, and it still takes too long to load, the fault may lie with your choice of webhosting services. VPS, Dedicated Hosting or Cloud Hosting are some of the most effective, and it is strongly recommended that you consult the experts to ensure your website is not letting your digital marketing team down.