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mediabalangan.com - Time is money. You must have heard that saying many times, right?
Well, the saying also applies in the realm of online business. The faster your website loads, the more people will be happy to buy from you.
Don't believe? This article will help you understand why speeding up your website has such a big impact on business performance.
Apart from that, you will also learn about the causes of a slow website, how to test speed, and how to improve it.
To understand all of this, let's first find out how website speed is measured. Happy reading!
Table of Contents
What is Website Speed?
Website speed is the time it takes for a website page to finish loading in a web browser. At least this page is seen by website visitors.
However, loading a website doesn't just happen on your device. When you access a website page, there are three processes that occur, namely:
- The process of sending the website page files that are accessed from the server to the web browser.
- The web browser process responds to file submissions.
- The process of processing and loading web pages in a web browser.
Of the three processes, what is used as a benchmark for website speed is when the page is loaded in the browser. Therefore, it is this speed that you should pay attention to.
Then, how fast should your website be? Research conducted by SEO expert Geoff Kenyon, states that:
- If it can load in 5 seconds, your website is faster than 25 percent of other websites.
- If it can load in 2.9 seconds, your website is faster than 50 percent of other websites.
- If it can load in 1.7 seconds, your website is faster than 75 percent of other websites.
- If it can load in 0.8 seconds, your website is faster than 94 percent of other websites.
So, a loading speed of five seconds is actually quite a sign that your website is fast. However, how fast does it need to be if the website is used for business?
How Does Website Speed Affect Business?
To find out the minimum speed limit required for a business website, you need to understand the influence of website speed on business. From there, you can find out how to increase website speed.
According to Google research, 53 percent of visitors will leave your website if it takes more than three seconds to load.
Not only that, another study says that every one second delay in website loading costs you seven percent of conversions. To be clear about this impact, imagine the following example.
Let's say your website generates IDR 10,000,000 per day. If the loading speed of your website is reduced by just one second, every day you have lost IDR 700,000!
This is just the impact of a slow website on conversions and earnings only. There are other influences, such as:
- 79 percent of consumers who are dissatisfied with their experience when accessing the website and do not want to come back again.
- 49 percent of them lose faith in your business.
- 44 percent of them share their disappointment with others. The more people don't believe in the quality of your business, the harder it will be to market it.
On the other hand, a fast website will benefit your business. Don't believe? Shopzilla, a marketplace website from the United States, has felt the benefits.
By speeding up website loading from seven to two seconds, Shopzilla gets 25 percent more page views. Not only that, it also increases revenue by 7-12 percent.
Not only income can increase because of a fast website. If you offer digital products, a fast website will certainly attract more people to download the product.
This is proven by Mozilla. After speeding up its website loading by 2.2 seconds, the Firefox browser is downloaded 60 million times more every year.
Well, from some of these statistics, it can be concluded that the ideal website loading speed is under three seconds. The sooner the better if the purpose of the website is for business.
Then, what makes a blog or website so slow? Let's discuss in the next section!
5 Factors That Cause a Slow Website
There are many things that make a website slow.include:
- Choosing a bad web hosting server
- Using a “heavy” theme
- Installing too many plugins
- Installing too many ads
- The database size is too large
In this section, we will discuss how much these things affect the loading speed of the website.
1. Choosing a Bad Web Hosting Server The
discussion about website speed cannot be separated from a web hosting server. The reason is, the server is one of the main factors determining how fast or slow a website is.
If the type of server used by your website has poor performance, the loading speed will not be optimal. Then, what type of server should you use?
Currently, Apache and NGINX are the two types of web hosting servers that are generally offered. However, you need to know that both of them are starting to lose popularity with LiteSpeed servers.
This change is due to the server speed that LiteSpeed offers. A research shows that Litespeed server is 84 times faster than Apache and 12 times faster than NGINX.
In addition to the type of server, the location of the server also affects performance. The farther the server is from the website visitor, the longer the process for serving the website in that person's browser.
So, we recommend that you use a server that is in the same country as the majority of website visitors.
2. Using a “Heavy” Theme
Many people want their website to look luxurious. That is, a website with various visual elements that are considered attractive, including headers large sliders , and widgets.
However, you need to avoid themes that offer these things for a business website. The more complex your website pages, the longer it will take to load. Especially if visitors access it from a mobile browser and the connection is not that good.
Not to mention, not all of these visual elements can be displayed properly on various screen sizes. Visitors might even find the website in a disheveled condition and leave it.
This is the reason why you should choose a website theme that looks simple, but still attracts visitors.
3. Installing Too Many Plugins
Plugins make it easy for you to add features to your website.buttons share to social media, to complex ones like page builders and checkouts purchase
Well, as simple as anything, plugins eat up server bandwidth. Plus if the plugin you are using is not updated or compatible with the CMS version. This will further slow down the performance of the website.
For the reasons above you must install a plugin that is always updated. In addition, also take into account what plugins are really needed. Don't have too many plugins on your website.
4. Installing Too Many Ads
Advertising is indeed one of the additional income of many website owners. However, you should not put too many ads on the website.
Apart from the fact that not a few people are bothered by advertisements on the website, too many marketing banners certainly slow down loading.
The reason is, every ad displayed on the website requires an HTTP request. If there are too many request processes that occur when a visitor accesses a page, the server will be overwhelmed.
5. Database Size is Too Large
As the name implies, the database is a place to store various website data, including:
- Username
- Password
- Posting
- Comments
- category
- Plugin
Well, that data must accumulate with the development of your website. Unfortunately, each entry databaseIn other words, the website database will eventually become very large.
For that, you must diligently check the list of posts that have been trashed or plugins that have been deactivated. If so, delete the post or plugin as soon as possible to reduce database size.
These five things are just some of the factors that slow down a website.
How to Check Website Speed and Read the Results
You don't need to be afraid to spend money to be able to check website speed. Fortunately, today there are several quality free website speed check tools. Pingdom is one of them.
How to use this tool is very simple. On the main page of the Pingdom website, you will see two columns. In the left column, type the URL of your website.
Then, click the column on the right to specify the location of the speed test. We recommend that you choose the closest location.
If so, click the Start Test button next to it to run the test. The results of this test will appear in seconds, so you don't have to wait long.
The results of the Pingdom test are also quite easy to understand for website owners who do not master the technical aspects.
However, the results of this test consist of several parts and can appear confusing. Therefore, here you will be explained about these sections.
Before testing with Pingdom, you should also keep in mind that this tool is not perfect. Test results are subject to change even if you do nothing to the website.
Now, after knowing how to check website speed, what can you do to optimize it? Read on in the next section!
How to Speed up Your Website Loading
Depending on the results of your website's loading speed test, you may not need to perform all the optimization methods discussed in this section.
However, there is nothing wrong if you want to try them one by one so that the website loads faster. The following is a list of methods that will be discussed:
- Image optimization
- Enable Gzip compression
- Enable caching
- Remove unused plugins
- Limit the number of posts per page
- Use embeds for videos
- Leverage browser caching
- Use CDN
1. Image Optimization The
first way to speed up website loading is to optimize images . You can upload multiple images to the website. Moreover, a website that lacks visual elements also does not look attractive in the eyes of visitors.
It's just that, you have to remember to optimize every image file that is submitted to the website.
How to? One of them is to use a JPEG file type. Compared to PNG, the file size tends to be smaller.
Apart from that, you should also compress the image with a tool like TinyJPG. JPEG file size which is generally small, can still be reduced again with this technique.
2. Enable Gzip Compression
Gzip compression is a way to compress the size of your website files, including CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and XML. By activating it, resources the server
To enable Gzip compression, you need two things, namely:
- Access cPanel
- Access the file manager in cPanel
cPanel is a control panel over the web hosting server you are using. Usually, the username and password are given when you buy a hosting service.
After logging in to the cPanel Dashboard, locate and click on File Manager.
Then, open the public_html folder and locate the .htaccess file. If you can't find the file, it's most likely hidden.
To view the .htaccess file, click the settings button in the top right corner of the page.
Once the menu appears, click the Show hidden files checkbox as shown below. Then, click Save.
Now the .htaccess file should appear. Right-click on the file, then select Edit. Inside the file, add the code below to enable Gzip compression.
<IfModule mod_filter.c>
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE “application/atom+xml” \
“application/javascript” \
“application/json” \
“application/ld+json” \
“application/manifest+json” \
“application/rdf+xml” \
“application/rss+xml” \
“application/schema+json” \
“application/vnd.geo+json” \
“application/vnd.ms-fontobject” \
“application/x-font-ttf” \
“application/x-javascript” \
“application/x-web-appmanifest+json” \
“application/xhtml+xml” \
“application/xml” \
“font/eot” \
“font/opentype” \
“image/bmp” \
“image/svg+xml” \
“image/vnd.microsoft.icon” \
“image/x-icon” \
“text/cache-manifest” \
“text/css” \
“text/html” \
“text/javascript” \
“text/plain” \
“text/vcard” \
“text/vnd.rim.location.xloc” \
“text/vtt” \
“text/x-component” \
“text/x-cross-domain-policy” \
“text/xml”
</IfModule>
</IfModule>3. Enable Caching
Caching is the process of temporarily storing website page data in the browser. With it, the browser does not have to repeatedly request data from the page being accessed, unless its cache is cleared. Automatically, the less resources server
4. Remove Unused Plugins
Removing unused plugins is also one way to speed up website loading. The convenience provided by the plugin is indeed tempting. Not infrequently who want to install various kinds of plugins on their website.
However, as discussed in the section on the causes of a slow website earlier, the number of plugins affects the loading speed. Not only active plugins, but also inactive ones.
Well, if you already have a lot of plugins, you need to weigh the benefits. Use what you need most, then disable and delete everything else.
5. Limit the Number of Posts on the Main Page of the Blog
If your website has a blog, perhaps you want to display a lot of posts on the main page. Of course, so that visitors feel more comfortable on the website.
Unfortunately, this will slow down the loading of the main blog page. In order to not display too many posts, you need to change the WordPress settings.
To do this, click Settings > Reading in the WordPress sidebar. Look at the image below.