How to improve your website - 2 Speed Up Your Website

Our second article on how to improve your website is regarding the speed of your website and how important it is.

The Need for Speed

Have you ever used a website and had to wait for what seems forever for it to load? If you have, like us, you’ll then know how important it is for the user experience.

One problem we come across is with designers and marketing specialists who try and build them. They don’t always do this with usability and speed in mind. All too often it’s seen as a bonus if you have a fast website. It should be an integral part of the build. Customers urge developers to add more and more features to their website and still expect it to load with the same speed as before.

 

Good Performance Improves User Experience

If you’ve been frustrated by slow websites then you’re not alone. A study in 2016 by Google’s Doubleclick showed that 53% of visits from mobile devices were abandoned if they took longer than 3 seconds to load. Another study by Radware in 2013 found that a users’ perception of a website can be damaged by a slow website. Users who experienced the slower version of the website complained about frustrated and bored with waiting.
In some cases, your websites speed influences whether users get to experience the website at all. Consider users with older technology and slower devices.

How to Check your Website Speed

There are many tools and websites available for checking how your website performs. They show you where improvements can be made. We’ve covered image optimisation in our first tip and we cover more with our article on 7 ways to speed up your website.

One tool that we use quite a bit to analyse the potential issues with website speed is GTMetrix.
We will be publishing more information and tips on some of the information that these reports show.

We encourage you to follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date with any more tips we have.

Free Website Speed Check

If you’d like us to do a quick performance check and brief analysis of your website please do contact us and we can help you.