What are the causes that slow down your website?
You’ve most likely already heard a lot of talk about how important the loading speed is. After all, the slow websites will annoy guests and cut back conversions.
However, it’s typically hard to find out the way to accurately gauge your site’s current performance.
Here are the top ways to figure out the causes that can affect the speed of your website:
What are the Causes that Slow Down Your website?
- Caching Issues
- Too many plugins
- You’re Not Using a Content Delivery Network
- Slow Web Hosting
- Unoptimized images files
- Too many file requests
- JavaScript Issues
- Use a lightweight WordPress theme
- Too Many Ads
- Too much traffic:
Why it is important to speed up your WordPress Site?
How to Check the Current Speed of your website?
Caching Issues:
Caching is a technique that stores the copies and serves them back when requested. When users access your site and demand the same content their browsers can display the cached data rather than having to reload it, thus speed up the entire data retrieval process.
When used correctly. it reduces the bandwidth and improves the performance of your website.
Here are the few belongings you should consider before caching:
Use just one cashing plugin on your website because more than one can affect the speed of your website.
Check your hosting if it’s fine to use a caching plugin. Because some hosting packages already accompany free server-side caching.
Therefore, the plugin might cause a problem than solving it.
Install a specialized caching plugin:
Below is the list of best free caching plugins for your Website to solve the caching issue:
Too many plugins
Having too many plugins can cause poor performance of your website because each one of those can make its own file request.
Each plugin has a CSS file and some JavaScript files to load. It means more load to carry for your website that can affect the performance of your website.
Delete Unused Plugins:
It is wise to delete all the plugins which your website is not using because they can make things slow down so make sure to always deactivate the unused plugins and themes.
You’re Not Using a Content Delivery Network
A CDN is a short-term content distribution network that is placed in geographic locations. They are widely used to serve the web content to website visitors with high availability, and increase performance.
It works by storing the copies of your website and then it quickly loads the pages to all the users who are located away from your main server.
If you did not use a CDN on your website then your website may load slowly.
Use a Content Delivery Network
CDN’s primary job is to serve the website to the users according to their nearby locations and hence connect users quickly.
For example,
A CDN assigns a local server to a website. it gives the website a US server for its US visitors.
To implement a CDN in your website simply sign up to Cloudflare. it is a simple program that helps you to speed up your website.
Provide your website’s URL, update nameservers for your domain which you will get after selecting your plan.
It will decrease the loading speed of each page of your website
Slow Web Hosting
If you want to display your website online you need a good hosting service. The first thing that happens is this process is.
Your browser sends a request to the server. It’s requesting all the knowledge and data, so it can load your website.
So, it makes a big difference when it comes to the speed of your website.
If you choose cheap hosting then it will slow your website in a result of this you will lose your valuable clients.
Choose a high-Quality web hosting provider
You should Invest your budget in high-quality web hosting providers because bad hosting causes your website to slow which means losing your customer so, make sure to buy good hosting that guarantees a fast load time.
Unoptimized images files:
Usually, the most common reason behind the website slowness is unoptimized images.
The uploading o larger-sized images can also increase the size of your web page causing them to load slowly.
Large image size is going to take a long time. If you’ve got a lot of large images used in your website, then you’re adding extra load time on your website.
The file format is can also be an important thing here.
For example:
Quite naturally the Images like PNG, JPG, and GIF images load quickly. But, some formats like TIFF and BMP are going to take more space and can increase the load time.
Unoptimized images
- Before uploading an image check the image size.
- use a JPG file format or the large images
- optimize images and compress them. Compressing images is as simple as dragging your images and drop them into online tools.
To compress the image, try one of the tools given below:
Too many file requests
In a case a website contains too much JavaScript, CSS, and too many image files, so, every file has a new request so, it will increase the HTTP request.
Your server can handle only a few requests at a time and when a user visits your website the browser will perform few requests to load all of these files which can reduce the speed of your website page load.
Solution:
- Try to reduce the HTTP requests by using Sprites.
- Reduce the number of files. Minify CSS and JavaScript files, which can also reduce the number of files when loading a web page.
JavaScript Issues
JavaScript makes your website fully functional for your users. Without using JavaScript, your site would be dull.
If you are familiar with Google PageSpeed Insights tool then you’ll probably know that it takes time for jQuery & JavaScript to be loaded, and executed.
So, if you’re using multiple API calls to render JavaScript or jQuery data, it may result in a significant delay while loading the online pages.
However, it is very important to optimize, your JavaScript file.
Optimize JavaScript files:
- Reduce the amount of CSS and JS calls by removing all extra whitespaces and all the unnecessary comments used in the code.
- To improve the site loading speed. you must do some manual fixing If you’re aware of the WordPress theme.
- If not, then use plugins that will assist you to achieve this goal; the foremost popular being Autoptimize which will help in optimizing CSS, JS, and even HTML of your WordPress website.
Use a lightweight WordPress theme
One of the main factors in increasing your website speed is to Choose a speedy WordPress theme because a heavy theme can cause your website to slow.
Your WordPress theme plays an important role in how quickly your website loads. Use a lightweight theme that has a stunning user experience.
use the themes that have those options which you needed, because the theme may also contain features that you are not going to use in your website so, it is just a burden for your website, choose them wisely!
Check theme reviews when selecting a theme make sure to check it have good reviews and contains features like SEO optimized, speedy, and responsive, etc.
You can buy themes and plugins from Theme Forest it is the most popular themes marketplace trusted by millions of people.
Too Many Ads
Another reason that can impact the speed of your website is displaying too many ads on your website.
according to research by Patrick Hulse:
“60% loading time of a website page was caused due to the scripts that place adverts”
To display ads on your website you use code and it takes space just like the other things on the website like images, videos, files, plugins, or the other content used in your website.
overloading of your website with advertisements is simply the addition of HTTP requests, so, it takes extra time in the processing hence cause the overloading of your website.
Just like pop-under etc creates many HTTP requests that not only make your website slow and unresponsive but also irritating to viewers.
So, it is wise to choose only a limited number of advertisements and use them where you needed for monetizing your website with high traffic.
As result, it will not only improve the performance of your website but it will also help you to improve the CTR’s to your ads…
Too much traffic:
The primary reason that causes your website performance to suffers is the increase in traffic on your web page.
If your website is experiencing a lot of traffic, then it will eventually affect the speed of your website.
Solution:
To solve this problem, you must increase your website server’s available resources. You may need to upgrade your current shared hosting plan or need to select a new package.
Why it is important to speed up your WordPress Site?
The speed of a website directly impacts the success or failure in serving its objective.
When a user land on your website you have a very short time to attract them.
In case of a website is slow, users have to spend more time waiting.
More often, they lose patience and leave.
Further, users are much less likely to come back to slower websites.
- According to a StrangeLoop case study: the second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% loss in conversions.11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
- According to a report by the Microsoft Bing search team:
second, longer delay in page responsiveness reduced user satisfaction by 3.8%, increased lost revenue per user by 4.3%, and a reduced click by 4.3%.”
- improving the speed of your website should be one of your top priorities.
Because Search engines rank those websites which have fast-loading times. So, if you want to improve the ranking in the SERPs.
How to Check the Current Speed of your website?
There are many tools available in the market nowadays that help you to improve those factors which can increase the chances for the better performance of our website on Google.
- Gtmatrix:it is a tool that gives you a detailed report about your website performance it uses Google Page Speed and Yahoo! And Yslow to increase your website’s performance.
- Web Page Test:it is another great tool that helps you to check the speed and performance of your website it shows the speed in different browsers from multiple locations around the world.
- Pingdom:world You get a detailed summary of your website’s test results including performance grade, response codes, insights, content size, etc.
- Page speed also provides suggestions on your website to fix the performance issues.
Conclusion:
The success of your website depends on the performance and response of the website. you should figure out the ways that can affect the speed of your website.
It can help you to boost its Search Engine Optimization. The speed and performance of the website may depend on many factors like unoptimized images, too many ads.
Too many file requests, caching issue, too many plugins, slow theme, JavaScript issue to name a few.
After implementing these you should have to test the website to check if its speed has actually improved.
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