Website speed matters.
How quickly (or slowly) it loads directly impacts your customers’ experience. According to research, the average site takes at least 3.21 seconds to load. Every one-second delay reduces page views by 11 percent and causes up to 43 percent of visitors to leave when it takes more than 3 seconds.
Conversely, if loading times are fast, web browsers visit up to nine pages on a site, which could lead to more sales conversions.
If you’re running your website or have a website marketing team on the job, these statistics shouldn’t be ignored. Loading speed does matter, and how you get around slow speeds will significantly impact your business now and in the future.
Dealing With Laggy Content
There are a few reasons why your website loads slower than the average:
- Images and videos
- Javascript files
The resolution of images and videos takes up a lot of data to load, especially if they are high-definition and served by a mediocre Internet connection. For instance, if your home page alone has two 2GB photos and a 1080p video clip, it’s going to take more than three seconds to load.
Outdated JavaScript text or unnecessary plug-ins will also bloat loading since they are additional data to transmit.
The solution? Digital marketing services must optimise videos and images and remove unneeded plugins. Optimising videos and photos means converting them to smaller sizes without affecting their overall quality.
Optimising Photo and Video Elements
For photos, the best formats are:
- GIF: Use this for graphs, charts, logos, and icons since this format can blend animation and multiple colours.
- JPEG: Compatible with standard photographs. However, JPEG compression impacts the quality due to its correlation with the size. This is what’s called a “lossy” compression, which is why you may want to consider the following format.
- PNG: Acts like JPEG compression without loss of quality. As such, PNG files are perfect for standard photos or even photo editing, especially when rendering the background transparent.
For videos, do not set them to the highest resolution. The best setting is 480p, as it’s neither blurry nor high-definition.
Streamlining JavaScript
When dealing with bloated JavaScript texts, eliminate plugins that can be turned into a separate page. For example, there is no need to add a Contact Us plugin on your home page; instead, create a separate page on your website.
The same JavaScript advice goes for websites that use cascading style sheets (CSS) files. This type of code dictates how a site’s aesthetics will turn out, from colours to font, font size, image positioning, video positioning, etc.
Unnecessary CSS will also bottleneck loading speeds since the browser has to read through the entire CSS file to understand what it has to process before showing it on screen. This can be particularly annoying if the CSS contains irrelevant scripts, especially when WordPress is the website builder.
Editing CSS on your own could result in a portion of your website disappearing or certain sections being misplaced. You will need a professional’s help, such as website marketing professionals, to trim your CSS file, so the browser loads only what it needs to.
In addition, too much text on a landing page will also bottleneck loading speeds. While not as bulky as photos or videos, they’re still data that has to be transmitted. Keep lines of text within three to four sentences before creating the next paragraph. Your website should load within an average of 3.21 seconds.
In Closing
Websites load data. The smaller the size, the faster the loading times. The converse is also true, so remember to optimize content according to this guide.
Smaller, quality media will keep customers coming back and likely to convert their visits to sales as long as you grab their attention with a website that loads faster than they can blink.
For digital marketing services in Vaughan that prioritise fast Internet speeds for better business growth, reach out to Analytics Beyond. We offer SEO, PPC, and website marketing services in Toronto for today’s fast-paced, digital business world.