Website load time

In the modern technology era, waiting is not an option. As computers and devices become faster and faster, consumers demand services and products that also meet their demand for time. For millennials in particular, time is precious. Being able to work on the go and utilise mobile devices is an important aspect of the technological interaction of the 18-35 demographic. This impatience will also stretch to your website. No matter how well designed and how well researched and developed your search engine optimisation is, customers will not view your website if it is slow to load.

Equally as important, Google’s own algorithm uses site speed to rank websites and decide the order of results after a Google search. A slower site loading time to Google means a less professional Web site and this is measured using time to first byte ( the time it takes for the first byte of information to be sent from your website). In addition, if your website is slow to load then this may negatively influence the number of pages the search engine crawl bots can index during the allotted time, meaning that slower speed can lead to some keywords not even being indexed.

So how do we at Pumpkin Web design make sure our pages load quickly and effectively? Well here are a few tips:

Images

Make sure the image file type is png and the size is optimal for the webpage. In terms of load time you don’t want your image to be too large, and if your image is too small the quality will be greatly reduced. Be sure to edit the size of your images in the original media program rather than inside the code itself, as this will not reduce load time.

Also, if you use many small images throughout your site, you can optimise the load time by using css sprites where you can write a template which will group all of the smaller files like buttons together and these will load all at once.

Code Editing

Throughout the html, css and javascript used, if you remove code comments, extra lime spaces and anything unnecessary you can dramatically reduce the load time of your website as it will take less time for the code itself to load.

Code Compression

Google recommends using a code compressor to reduce the file size of your code.
Overall, site load time will have a huge impact on the popularity and success of your website. Even one slow page somewhere in your site can and probably will have a detrimental effect on your sites ranking.

Pumpkin Web Design Ltd is a small and highly results driven digital agency working for like minded clients in Preston, Chorley, Southport, Blackburn, Burnley, Morecambe,Wigan, Manchester, London, Warrington, Blackpool, Lancaster, Leyland, Lytham St Annes, Bolton, Chester and the UK. Our services include web design, SEO, content marketing, video production, brand design and much more.