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Slow Loading Website? Kelowna Web Design Team Offers the Top Five Reasons and Solutions

Three, two...oh...you've lost them. A recent study on the cost of poor web performance shows 57% of users will abandon a website after just three seconds1. Google says it takes less than a blink of an eye--400 milliseconds--for users to get impatient with a page and flee...often for good2. At Kelowna website design firm Twin Creek Media, we think it's our job to build sites that are attractive as well as user-friendly. And that means fast. If your website is slow, your sales and your website traffic will suffer from high bounce rates, sinking visits, and, of course, fewer conversions. So, why is your website loading slowly, and what can you do about it? Here are the top five reasons and solutions:

Reason #1: Your images are too big. Solution:

You can optimize your site's images in two ways. First, use the right format. GIF's are great for logos, PNG is perfect for high-quality transparent images, and JPEG is just right for detail-heavy images such as photos. Second, resize your image. Smaller images mean smaller files and way faster page-loading.

Reason #2: Flash is not fast.

Solution: Flash can certainly make your site fancy and animated, but it will definitely take a toll on your page-loading times. If you need a flash application on your site, ask your web designer to load sequences of external data with XML to shrink the file size.

Reason #3: Your shared web host isn't performing

Solution: If your website is being hosted on a server with a lot of other websites, your page-load time could be suffering. Ensure you're getting both savings and speed from your shared hosting provider, or consider dedicated hosting so your website is the only one on a server.

Reason #4: Your content needs to be compressed.

Solution: Instead of sending data in several large files, you can use something called HTTP compression to convert your content into a single, smaller file. If this is your page-loading problem, you're going to see immediate results after compression.

Reason #5: You've got spam.

Solution:  Your trusty website developer can apply a few different tools to spam-proof your site. A common spam deterrent on sites with forms is captchas. If you've got email spam, send for a spam blocker, stat! For more on how a slow website can affect your web traffic, check out this infographic by Smartbear:

Want site traffic and sales to soar with great web page design and ultra-fast load times? Talk to the Kelowna web design experts at Twin Creek Media. Contact us today!

1. "The Cost of Poor Web Performance." Smartbear. Web. Accessed Jan. 30, 2012. 2. Lohr, Steve. "For Impatient Web Users, an Eye Blink Is Just Too Long to Wait." New York Times. March 1, 2012, p. A1.