Today we all want things yesterday!This is exactly why if your website is even a little too slow to load, your visitors will simply lose interest and go somewhere else. According to a 2006 study of online shoppers by Akamai and JupiterResearch, 33% said they would abandon a retail website that took longer than 4 seconds to load - half the time people were ready to wait at the beginning of the online shopping boom.
In a summary of their report, they say that:
- The consequences for an online retailer whose site underperforms include diminished goodwill, negative brand perception, and, most important, significant loss in overall sales.
- Online shopper loyalty is contingent upon quick page loading, especially for high-spending shoppers and those with greater tenure.
- JupiterResearch recommends that retailers make every effort to keep page rendering to no longer than four seconds.
So, you have just 4 seconds to make a good impression before your visitors go away… Now, how about the fact that your website may be loading slowly without you even knowing it? How can that be? Read on.
The thing is that, because you probably visit your own website regularly, a lot of it may be getting stored in your Temporary Internet Files folder on your computer, meaning that only the parts that have changed will need to be downloaded from the Internet. In other words, you could be viewing much of your website from a copy stored on your PC, giving you the illusion that it loads in a snap, while in reality it could be much, much slower.
So, what can you do to make your website load faster?
The best advice is to ask for help from a professional web designer who knows what they are doing and can optimize your website. The following are some of the things that your web designer will generally check and do to make sure that your website loads as fast as possible:
- Reduce the size and number of images
The images on your website or blog need to be optimized for the Internet so they load as fast as possible. The good news is that it is possible to reduce the download size of an image drastically, without affecting the quality too much. Also, consider using less images to make your website load faster. - Cut down on heavy Flash animations, widgets and scripts
Flash files and other widgets tend to be bulky, and unnecessary scripts will also add to the time it takes for your website to download and be displayed. If you do use these technologies in your website, make sure that they are very well optimized, and measure the impact they have on your website loading times. - Stick to simple website designs
This one’s a no-brainer - the simpler your website’s design, the faster it will load. And at a time where minimalism is making a comeback, less could very well mean more if it means that your visitors don’t have to face the agony of a slow-loading website. - Optimise your HTML code
Depending how your website was designed, there could be unwanted tags and bits of coding that are doing nothing except adding to the amount of data that visitors have to download before viewing your pages. A professional optimization can do a great deal to make your website load faster in such a case. - Change to a better hosting service
It could very well be that your web hosting is not up to the task - maybe your hosting provider itself does not have enough bandwidth to cope with demand, or maybe your website is on a server with too many other users and this is slowing things down. If any of these are the case, you will be wanting to either switch to a dedicated server or change hosting providers altogether.
Remember, 4 seconds and they’re gone! This means that you absolutely cannot afford to have your website load even a tad too slowly - and as you will surely have experienced yourself, unoptimized websites can be slow even on a fast broadband Internet connection.
Considering that, as of August 2007, around 17% of US Internet users still don’t have broadband there’s all the more reason to make sure your website is as fast as possible, to get that extra advantage and avoid losing potential visitors and sales!
