Website speed can seem subjective, but we have all experienced the frustration of waiting for a website to load. Not only can a slow website turn away potential customers, but can negatively impact your SEO rankings.
How to Check
Even if you aren’t seeing your website loading slowly, it may appear slower to others using a slower internet connection. There are two quick tools you can use to check objectively how well your website is load.
- Google Page Speed – This simple tool provides a red or green feedback, to let you know instantly how your website scores.
- YSlow – This tool provides more technical feedback, to give you a clearer picture of what may be slowing your website down.
Keep in mind. That these tools provide general feedback and it’s nearly impossible to get a “perfect” score. You just want to see a passing grade, which indicates general sufficiency, rather than perfection. Websites with those kinds of scores tend to cost thousands in upkeep.
Causes
There could be any number of things slowing down your websites. A few things you can check might include:
- Is your local internet connection slow? That could make your website seem slow. In this case, the tests above should give your differing information.
- Images or videos that are too large. Look into making them smaller or compressed.
- Plug-ins or other integrations may need to be updated or removed.
- Your server or hosting provider. Especially if you are using a value-based provider, you may want to upgrade your service or change providers.
If you are receiving a number of complaints or can not find the source of your problem, you may want to hire someone to help you get to the bottom of the issue. We can often dig into the code or see from the back end of your website what might be slowing it down and get you back to a reasonable speed. If you need assistance, please give us a call.