4 Causes of a Slow Website

Slow websites can be very frustrating for users and are detrimental to your business. What causes a website to be slow? Let’s discuss the various factors that can affect website speed and performance.

Why is website speed important?

Website speed is important for a variety of reasons. Slower page loading times can lead to user frustration and ultimately cause them to abandon your site in favor of faster competitors. 

It has been shown that even small decreases in load speed can have a significant impact on conversions, meaning fewer sales or website visits, if your website isn’t performing optimally. 

Google’s search engine algorithms now take into account website loading speeds as part of their rankings criteria. So, having a slow website can result in far less organic traffic from search engines. 

Ensuring your website is running at its best should be a top priority for any business owner looking to remain competitive in today’s market.

Server Location & Hosting Provider

The location of a server can have an impact on website loading speed. As visitors from other parts of the world may experience longer page load times, due to their geographic location relative to the server.

Depending on the hosting provider and type of hosting plan you choose, this too can have an impact on website speed.  Quality hosting is one of the essential components in ensuring a website’s smooth operation.

Don’t want to mess with hosting? Check out my WordPress Maintenance Plan options.

Resource-Heavy Elements & Media Files

Resource-heavy elements such as large images, videos, audio files, or script consumption bandwidth could result in slow loading times, unless these files are compressed or optimized. 

It’s important to keep these resources at a manageable size so sites don’t take too long to load up when visited by users. 

Bloated Code & Databases

Websites often contain bloated code which impacts loading speeds directly. Pages need more time to render all HTML content before rendering any styling characters such as CSS classes. 

Doing regular code audits and optimizing existing code will improve page loading speeds considerably, without overloading servers with unnecessary tasks. Databases play an important role when serving websites and should be managed efficiently for optimal performance.

Security & Maintenance Issues

Security issues are another factor causing websites to perform poorly. Since malicious software might try to access confidential information stored within website databases or other folders unprotected by security measures, including firewall protection or regular scans for malware presence. Poor maintenance practices can also lead to software incompatibilities. 

Why Do I Need a Faster Website?

Now that you know what causes a slow website, you may want to know WHY You need a faster website. It’s fairly obvious why anyone would want a faster website, but here is my list:

An increase in user experience and satisfaction

A faster website leads to fewer abandoned visits, as users are less likely to become frustrated with slow loading times. This can result in more conversions as visitors who stay on the site longer are more likely to purchase products or services.

Better rankings on Google search results

As part of its algorithms, Google considers website loading speeds when ranking pages for search terms. Having a faster website can lead to higher rankings, thus resulting in more organic traffic from users searching for relevant keywords/phrases.

Improved security against malicious software threats

Fast websites are less susceptible to common software vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting attacks, SQL injections, and other exploits. This can help protect your site from malicious actors and reduce your overall risk profile.

Lower operating costs

Faster websites require fewer resources. Quicker information delivery means lower energy consumption and cost savings from having efficient storage and delivery systems. 

What Tools Do I Use for Improving Site Speed?

• Caching & Lazy Load: WP Rocket
• CDN: Bunny CDN
• Image Compression: Tinypng.com
• Image compression plugin: Imagify
• Fastest loading contact form: Fluent Forms

How Do I Fix a Slow Website?

• Optimize your images: Reduce the file size of images and videos on your site to make them faster to load.
• Minimize your font selections: Every font and every font weight requires a website browser to download more files, which can slow down your loading time. You should never use more than two fonts on your website, and stick to only using two weights (e.g., regular and bold).
• Enable browser caching: Allow browsers to store certain elements of your website so they don’t need to re-download them every time a user visits the same page.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN): Serve static assets from multiple global data centers instead of just one location, reducing latency for users located in different regions/countries.
• Enable compression: Use Tinypng.com to reduce the amount of data transferred between server and client, resulting in faster loading times.

How Do I Test if My Website is Slow?

To test your website’s performance, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights. After putting in your website’s URL, this tool will give your website a score for both desktop and mobile. Below the scores, you will also see tips and tricks to help your website perform to the best of its abilities.

Need More Tips To Help Your Website Perform Better?

• What Every Website Designer Wishes You Knew
• What Stats Should You Care About With Your Website?
• The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging – Tips for New Bloggers

Who Do I Hire for a Slow Website?

I am the person behind Marc Hyde Creative! I’d love to help you with your next website design. All WordPress Designs are made custom. So, you have exactly what you want to help you run your blog or business. Are you curious about what it takes to make a website for you? What do you think are the causes of a slow website for you? Get in touch with me below.