A website that takes too long to respond can be detrimental to your online business as described by Sparringmind.com,
Studies have confirmed that you have a very short time to load your site before people click away, especially if they’ve been linked there from another site that they visit.
Think about it – within those few seconds, your users will most likely be sitting with their eyes glued to their monitor waiting for something to display. Thus, their eager fingers will be waiting for any reason to click something. You can see how tempting it can be to go for the back button, or for them to get distracted and move on to something else. The best way to avoid this from happening is by learning what mistakes can lead to this problem.
Choosing the Right Website Design
It’s very tempting to ignore a professionally done web design and to rather go for something free. After all, many of them might look ok, right? The problem with a lot of the free themes is that these web developers know that they won’t be making any money from them, and so it’s not worth it for them to spend their energy on perfecting them. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good quality free themes for WordPress out there, but you would have to look very long and hard. In addition, if you do happen to find a very good quality one, the next problem you’ll be facing is that it will be very difficult for your site to look different from the other thousands of sites that are using that same theme.
The best approach is to hire an experienced web designer, because they’ll already have a vast amount of knowledge on what will work best for your business, how to optimize the design correctly, and they will also have the skills to make your theme look completely unique so that you stand out from the average and ordinary.
Is Your Homepage Overloaded With Unnecessary Content
Most people will try to include as much information as possible on their homepage because they believe that this is the main entry point to their site. While it is true that your homepage will generally be the first point of contact for a large number of your prospects, other pages within your site can also become main entry points. Either way, regardless of which page you decide will be the main entry point to your site, it doesn’t mean that you have to overload it with everything you can find. Smallbiztrends.com states the following,
The more widgets and content you have on the front page, the longer your site takes to load.
Keep it simple. For example, there’s no reason to place sharing widgets on your homepage, because those widgets are more suited to actual posts and articles where you will get better usage from them; if the reader likes a particular article you’ve written they’ll share it. Basically, always ask yourself if a particular widget, image or content is necessary before implementing it anywhere on your site.
Going Crazy With Plug-Ins
This is usually a mistake that new WordPress users make. They realize just how powerful the CMS is, and how plug-ins can take it that step further, and so they start looking for every plug-in under the sun. Keep in mind that a plug-in is a small program or code that runs in the background, and so also needs to be processed, and so the more plug-ins that you have processing at any given time, your server has to be able to keep up. If too many plug-ins have been installed, whether your site is busy or not, it will begin to slow down. As with widgets, only utilize a plug-in if you really need it.
Using Images That Have Large File Sizes
Images can definitely be an excellent way to add eye candy to your site. However, if you don’t optimize them by making the file sizes as small as possible, this can also make it difficult for your site to load quickly. Most people feel that they need to have the image looking crystal-clear, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if your prospects don’t stay around long enough, they won’t be able to admire those beautiful images once they finally load. You should be able to get very good results if you optimize them correctly, and the best part is that they will load quickly.
Of course, there are many other reasons why your site could be running slow, and it isn’t always easy to spot them. The good news is that there are tools out there that can give you a better idea of where the problem is coming from. According to Onlinemediamasters.com,
GTmetrix is an amazing tool that provides detailed recommendations on how to improve your site speed, listed from high to low priority.
In the end, you have to do what you can to make your site inviting and user-friendly for your users, the longer you can keep them on your site, the more chances you’ll have them buying or needing something from you, or just coming back for more. The last thing you want is for them to click away and go somewhere else or to your competitors just because your site, with all its beautiful pages and amazing content, was not able to load quickly enough. This is the reason why when designing a website, you should be thinking about site performance from the very beginning and planning stages.
