Website speed is important! People are impatient in this day and age, and they want things fast.
The same goes for your website. No one likes a slow website! If your coaching or consulting website takes 15 seconds to load, it needs to be addressed ASAP.
This article will show you what might be causing your website to be slow and how you can fix it. Fast-loading websites keep your website visitors happy.
Slow websites are frustrating for users and can prompt them to leave your site. Your visitors won't hang around if your site takes longer to load! They'll hit the back button and go find one of your competitors - you don't want that. If you have a slow website, it's important to find out why and fix the issues.
Tools to check the website load speed
Luckily, you can use a few different site speed testing tools to determine what might be causing your website to be slow.
One of these is the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. As the name suggests, it's created by Google and closely relates to the speed benchmarks used by Google search engines.
The second tool is the Pingdom Website Speed Test. This tool also analyzes your website and provides you with a report of what is causing your site to load slowly. GTMetrix and WebPageTest are two more similar tools you can use.
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Pingdom Website Speed Test
- GTMetrix
- WebPageTest
There are many reasons why a website might be slow, but here are some of the most common issues:
- Too much traffic
- Is your current hosting plan sufficient for your current needs
- Optimize images, compress and lazy load images
- Use a caching plugin
- Reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining files
Why is your website running slow?
1. Is your website slow because of too much traffic or something else entirely?
If your website is slow because of too much traffic, you might need to upgrade your web hosting plan or find a new host altogether. If it's something else that's causing the slowness, you'll need to identify and fix the issue.
Use this free tool to check the speed of your web hosting provider. Choose your web hosting provider and check your server location.
If you are unsure who your web hosting provider is, use this handy tool to find who hosts your website - https://hostingchecker.com.
If you decide you want to switch hosting, you may want to get in touch with your provider.
2. Check your hosting plan - is it sufficient for your current needs, or do you need to upgrade?
Most coaches' and consultants' websites will be on shared hosting unless high-tech servers power their websites.
Your website might be slow if you're on a shared hosting plan.
In a shared hosting plan, you're sharing resources with other websites. If this is the case, you'll have to contact your web hosting provider and move your site to a better shared hosting environment. The other option is to upgrade to a higher plan that offers more space for your website.
3. Optimize your images and code for faster loading times.
Images are an essential component of your website. Not only do they improve the aesthetics of your website, but they also add more context to your pages to improve their user experience.
However, large images can slow down your website significantly. If you have lots of images on your page, it can take a significant amount of time to load. To combat this. use an image compression tool to reduce the size of your images.
Image source: CloudFlare
To compress your images, use a tool such as TinyPNG or ShortPixel.
Using WordPress image compressions plugins, you can also enable a feature called lazy loading to load only the images that are visible on the screen. These steps can help improve your website's performance and make it faster for your visitors. Use this free plugin to enable lazy loading.
4. Reduce the number of plugins you're using
Plugins add useful functionality to your websites, such as contact forms and image compression. However, too many plugins can slow down your website significantly. Choose only the plugins you need, and delete any that are no longer needed. This can help speed up your website's loading times.
5. Use a caching plugin to store a static version of your website's pages
Caching plugins can help speed up your website's loading times by storing a static version of your pages. This means that instead of having to generate the page each time it's requested, the plugin will serve up a "saved copy" instead - this saved copy is known as the cached version, which will load much faster. Many caching plugins are available, so choose one that fits your needs and install it on your website.
6. Minimize HTTP requests by combining files where possible
HTTP requests are the requests made by your website's visitors for the different elements that make up your page. The more requests a page makes, the slower it will load. You can reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining files where possible. This means combining all of the CSS and JavaScript files into one file and combining all of the images into one file.
Most caching plugins allow combining multiple files such as CSS and JavaScript.
You can also reduce the size of these files by simplifying them - this process is called minifying.
So try these methods to speed up your website. Don't forget slow websites don't tend to rank well on Google, so take every step possible to speed up your website.
Speed up your website and keep your visitors happy by following these tips. If you enjoyed this article, please share it! And if you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments below. Thank you!
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