When a patron orders food at a restaurant and receives sluggish service from the waiter, the restaurant frequently receives negative ratings on Yelp and fewer customers in the future. Similar to how a slow site speed can result in poor search engine rankings, decreased total site traffic, and unfavourable user experiences, a slow site speed can also affect how a site is seen by its users.
Website speed, also known as website performance, refers to the amount of time it takes for a web browser to load fully functional webpages from a particular website. Sites that have poor performance and render slowly in browsers can cause users to leave the site. In contrast, websites that load quickly have a better chance of converting visitors into customers and will often receive more traffic overall.
Why is site speed important?
According to the information provided in the infographic, a user's level of customer satisfaction drops by 21% for every second that elapses while the page is loading. The more a user waits, the less interested they will get, and you will see that your bounce rates are increasing at an alarming rate.
What slows down your site and what can you do about it
Page weight:
The quantity of resources that a website requires to load has a significant bearing on how quickly the website loads. A webpage's 'weight,' or load time, can be significantly increased by the addition of various elements, such as high-definition photos, video content, large JavaScript files, and heavy CSS files . To continue with our discussion of restaurants, if a waiter were to bring ten dishes to a table rather than two or three, the table would be served more slowly. In the same vein, a web page that requires more resources to load will do it more slowly.
Network conditions:
Even if a website is lightweight, network delay may slow browser loading. Network connectivity depends on local networking equipment and ISP services. Mobile devices using 3G or 4G instead of WiFi have slower Internet connectivity. Developers can't do much about poor connections, but there are ways to provide online resources rapidly. Minifying, compressing, and CDN hosting are techniques.
Hosting location:
Long-distance content delivery causes network latency. If a website's HTML and CSS files are housed in Ohio and its photos are hosted in Florida, a west coast user must wait while all of these files travel hundreds of miles to their device.
File optimization:
Images, videos, and documents might slow down your site. Always compress files before uploading (without sacrificing quality).
You can reduce the size of your website's photographs using Photoshop's "Save for Web & Devices" option or services like JPEG Compress.
Plugins:
Fewer plugins are better. Every plugin slows website load speed. Be sparing.
Browsers:
Make that your website code is compatible with Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.