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Is Your Website Fast Enough

In 2021, your website’s page speed has never been more relevant. 

Page speed can be the killer of websites. Page speeds have a direct effect on important things such as SEO, user experience, and conversion rates. 

So what exactly is page speed? Essentially, it is the time it takes to load everything on a website page. Most people would say a loading time of 2 seconds or less is good, so this should be your goal.

Why is page speed so important?

Page speed has become one of the biggest factors in SEO. By updating your speed you are in turn improving your rankings, user experience and retention.

SEO

When it comes to SEO, page and website speed is an essential part of how search engines rank your pages. 

This is because Google wants to deliver results that are fast and pulls users in. They are trying to present the most relevant content and websites through their search results. Page speed became an even more vital factor when Google updated their algorithm with the Google Page Experience Update.

UX

User experience, or UX, is really the big reason why search engines think about page speeds in their ranking algorithms. 

In the fast paced world that is the internet, people’s attention spans are dwindling. So if your website is taking 3 or more seconds to load, chances are you are losing the majority of your audience!

A faster website creates a better user experience and increases the retention rates and ranking of your website because your audience is not leaving your site due to load times!

Reasons for slow page and how to fix them

Reason 1: Code overhead or bloated code is a common factor slowing down your website. Code overhead is just unused code that is not relevant to your website.

The Fix: Trim the fat. Work with your web developer to help you determine what code is necessary and what code can be taken out.

Reason 2: Large assets on your website. Assets are simply the images and videos on your site. When adding images, most people use the highest resolution version they have. That’s going to be the best quality, right? Yes and no. Having the highest resolution can slow down the load time of your website.

The Fix: Reduce the size of your image enough to where you do not lose out on the quality of the images, while improving load times.

Another way to improve your page speed is through caching. Caching is when a browser saves a version of your webpage, so when you go back to it, you don’t have to reload the entire page all over again. This can greatly increase the overall speed of your website.

How to check your page speeds

There are plenty of different tools that you can use to test the page speeds of your website, but one of the most effective services is Google PageSpeed Insights.

Google’s analysis of your website is going to play a major role in how they rank your website, so it makes sense to utilize their tool to see how your site is performing. Not only does PageSpeed Insights help you see how Google scores your website, it also outlines the elements that are slowing your website down so you have a general idea of what you need to do going forward.

We Can Help

We understand upgrading page speed can be a very technical process that can end in frustration. Here at Five Technology, we want to ease the pain of page speed, website analytics, and SEO. For more information on how we can help your website become faster, contact us here!
 

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