How Fast Does Your Website Load?
I have been wanting to write this post for sometime and finally decided I can’t wait any longer.
I do a lot of syndication and visit many blogs on a daily basis. I also find myself leaving many websites on a daily basis. Not because the site does not have valuable content but because it just loads so slow or has annoying pop ups on every page of the site. Videos that take forever to load or background images and colors that make my head spin. I’m sorry if you have one of these sites, I don’t mean to pick on your site. I am writing this to help you get your site in order.
Statistics show these are the top reasons why someone will leave your website before they even get to read one word. It is hard enough to be successful online with out adding unnecessary hurdles.
There are many things that will factor into how fast your blog loads. I have created a short list of items you will want to look into to make sure your site loads as fast as possible.
- Hosting Provider: This is number one because it is the most important. If you don’t have a great provider with fast connection and web servers, it doesn’t matter how much optimization you do, your site it will still load slow. Pick a great provider, I personally do not like Go Daddy my site always loaded slow when I was hosted with them. I made the move to Host Gator years ago. Go Daddy may have improved since then.Never use a free website provider and never use wordpress.com, make sure you host your own blog on your own hosting account.
- WP Theme: This is the look and feel of your blog, the colors, images, layout and design. I see many people who have back ground images on their sites that are not optimized for use in a web page. If these images are not optimized they will take a tremendous amount of time to load and will slow down your entire site. If you have a background image on your blog make sure it is optimized for the web.Personally I think you are much better off with a solid white background. If you look at all the top websites on the net they all have white backgrounds. This is because it makes the content very easy to read. Simple is always better. We are not creating art projects, we are business building. You want a professional looking blog. The content should be the center of attention not the pretty background.
- Plugins: These are another item which can drastically slow down how fast your page loads. I will always test each plugin to make sure it does not affect the speed at which my page loads. Since browsers will read the code from top to bottom, I make sure if there are scripts running on the page they are inserted at the end of the page. This way the actually content will load before the script runs. This will speed up how quickly content gets on the page. As long as the majority of the page loads fast and there is content for them to start reading or looking at right away the other items can load a little slower.
- Site Content: Images and videos are major areas where people fail to optimize this content to load quickly. Here make sure sure the file size is reduced as much as possible so these items will load as fast as possible while still keeping the quality of the image good.
- Off Site content: This can be good or bad depending on where the content is hosted. If it is hosted on a fast server with loads of band width, it’s good, if not, it’s bad. Be careful with this kind of content make sure wherever you are pulling it from is fast or move it to your hosting account.
- Pop Ups: This is big turn off for me. I know, I know they work, and increase opt-ins on your website. But I don’t need or want to see it every time I visit your site and on every page I visit. This drives me nuts. If I visit a site and I get a pop up on the main page I will close it and continue on to the site. But if I visit a second page on that site and I get the pop up again I am gone. To me it’ s like the pushy salesman. Once is enough, keep in mind most people don’t even know you when they hit your site for the first time. There are ways to have these pop ups only display on the home page, and you can use a cookie to have it only pop up once a week or every so often.
These are about the biggest problems out there that can really slow down your Blog and/or drive your visitors away.
Here are a few suggestions and guidelines I go by for my site.
When I click on any link on my site I want the page to open and be displayed in 1 second to 2 seconds max.
This is important.
If people are on your site and they see a recent post that looks interesting, They click on it and have to wait for it to load they will loose interest and leave. Keep in mind there are millions of websites out there. If you expect people to stay at yours it better be fast and work right.
Click around on my site, go from page to page, even if you are on a poor internet connection the pages will load very fast. Last I check the initial load it was just over 2 seconds.
Here is a great tool to see how long each item on your page takes to load.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt
You also may want to consider a Cache plugin for your blog. This is a great one my friend Michael Berry shared with me.
http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/w3-total-cache
Sorry if I have offended anyone with this post my intentions are pure and I only wrote it to help you!
Rob,
I couldn’t agree with you more. Pop ups, busy looking websites, and slow loading pages is tough to handle and I too leave the site without becoming part of the conversation. Why don’t people get that popups are annoying? That most people bail when they see them? I’m glad you wrote this post, and more importantly I hope people take note and change their ways.
Regards,
Mike
Mike Pedersen recently posted..How To Attract Referrals For Your Business
I like D&D’s take on pop ups, they said it make you look desperate and I agree. First when someone visits a site for the first time they know nothing about the site or the owner. I have never once opted into one of those. I know they pull more and create a bigger list, but I think the quality of the list is no where near as good.
Rob,
You’ve identified many reasons that cause a blog to load slowly. Thanks for listing each one in case their impact goes unrealized. You are right that people don’t have the time or the patience to wait for a slow-loading blog and getting them to stay on your site is so critical. It is sometimes hard to balance it though since there could be an image or video that is key to the blog post itself.
We agree that pop-ups are definitely not the way to go. They are distracting and not appreciated at all. They make you seem desperate.
Thanks for identifying the cause of slow-loading blogs.
Dave and Dawn
Dave and Dawn Cook recently posted..LifeLock Reviews – Identity Theft
Hey D&D thanks for your comment. I do understand on the videos, there are some third party hosting sites that are lightning fast where you can host your media files and still get fast page loads. If you are interested in this info let me know and I will get it for you.
Hi Rob –
Thanks for that link to test our site speed
What’s considered fast – is there a range that’s considered ‘okay’ ?
It’s interesting – I run around 40 plugins on my site and have not found a need for a cache plugin so far. Worth testing with and without I’d imagine?
Would love to know where to stick videos for faster loading!
Appreciate you,
Andrea
Andrea Goodsaid recently posted..Better Blogging Habits and Self Reflection – Is this the way to wealth
Hi Andrea as for speed of page load I would shoot for under 2 seconds I think that’s a pretty good load speed. Although Google claims 50% of the site will load faster than 2 seconds.
For the faster loading videos there is a paid service that will host your video files. The site is called Edge Cast http://www.edgecast.com/ I am not sure what the rates are I have not used them but the reviews are good.
You will see a drastic improvement from adding a Cache plugin, I was pretty amazed after I added it to mine.
Thanks for your comment.
Rob
Hi Rob,
I noticed that my blog started to slow down and I figured it was due to the number of plugins I had installed. After adding W3 Total Cache, it picked up some speed.
I like the list you put together. My opt-in rate did increase after I installed the pop up box, but it only shows up once, so you shouldn’t mind visiting
I also have been wanting to change my background color and now that you mentioned it, I do notice that some of the top blogs have a white or light background. All things to consider. Thanks for sharing this because sometimes people just don’t know any better.
Golda
Golda Smith recently posted..Social Media Marketing Tip 17-How To Create A Rockin Blog Banner
All those plug ins are cool but we have to be careful with them. I had a buch on my blog and removed quite a few of them. sometimes they make our site look too busy and we confuse people. You may know what all of them do but a new person who is not savoy on blogging will just get lost and over whelmed. And remember those are the people we want to make feel comfortable.
Thanks for your comment…..
Awesome points! Thanks for the tip on the plugin’s.
I always think about it when I am installing one and I regularly delete ones I am not going to use. This was great information because it is like you said, if your site is taking to long to load I am leaving.
I hope every one takes note of this. Thanks again from sharing.
Joe
Joe Malinowski recently posted..4 Steps to Enhance Your Business’s Social Networking
I glad you liked it Joe. It is wise to go through your plugins and make sure they are worth keeping. Not just for cool factor but are they actually useful and do they operate fast.
Thanks for good stuff
Your welcome thanks for stopping by and commenting.
This post needs to be read by every single webmaster on the planet!…lol. Seriously though, if more webmasters would take the time to “trim the fat” off there webpages, it would make a huge difference on how fast there pages load. Especially simple things like using external javascript files. Why isn’t something like that not used by everyone?
And also, as you mentioned, those people who build there entire website using flash. In most cases it makes no sense mainly because search engine spiders can’t read it (except for Google of course…)
Josefina Argüello – Posicionamiento Web
I couldn’t agree more, so much useless stuff on many websites that only slow them down. Thanks for your comment.
Helpful blog, bookmarked the website with hopes to read more!
Thanks for sharing that with everyone Rob and thank you for mentioning my plugin suggestion. A website load time is so very important.
Michael
Mr. Personal Development Michael Berry recently posted..Healing Mind Power
Hey Mike, thank you for sharing it with me, it did really help my site load time.
Hi Rob
No you did not step on my T’s LOL
I can agree more about pop ups
Great post and thanks for the tips
egards
Theuns
I know hate is a strong word and should not be used, however it is the word that comes to mind when I visit for the first time and shoved in my face is a form asking for my name and email address. LOL Think about this in traditional business. You walk into a store and before you enter some one walks up to you and says hey I need your name and phone number. for me not a smart way to do business.
Rob
Thanks for this i found it interesting and want to go and see how long my site takes to load. I agree with you on all points and I usually leave the site as well if it takes too long to load. My other pet hate is a video that automatically plays when I visit. I like your clean fresh theme, what have you used? Also the plugin that allows me to chose a different post to leave with my comment what is it?
Belinda
belinda cunningham recently posted..6 Organised planning The crystallisation of desire into action part 1
Hey Belinda my theme was created by Studio Press http://www.studiopress.com/ it’s not a free theme but it works well and like you mentioned looks very clean. I did tweak the images and colors to my liking. On their site it’s called Church.
The comment plugin is called comment Luv. http://www.comluv.com it’s a good one, it also provide one “do follow” link for the commenter.
Oh no Rob mine took 5 sec to load I always thought that was just my internet being slow.I better look into that.
Belinda
belinda cunningham recently posted..6 Organised planning The crystallisation of desire into action part 1
5 secs is a bit long, I do think the cache will help some. Is your blog self hosted? If not you will want to move it.
Rob sorry I can’t seem to find the plugin w3 total cache – comes up with an error if I search with in my site and other plugins when I search for it with your link. What am I doing wrong?
Belinda
belinda cunningham recently posted..6 Organised planning The crystallisation of desire into action part 1
I emailed you the link, let me know if for some reason it doesn’t work.
Hi Rob,
Super post on load times. I think that the number of plugins may also impact your load time if you have too many of them, particularly if your theme isn’t optimized, yes? Thank you so much for sharing this post (and not waiting any longer to do so). ~ Linnea
Linnea recently posted..Facebook Fun
You are very welcome and you are correct plugins make a big difference. Basically anything you add to your site will likely slow it down. You can think of it like a drawer the more stuff we put in it the longer it will take us to look through it.
Thanks for visiting and commenting.
Rob
Great post. Too many plugins can kill and site and kill each other. It’s better to keep it clean.
Kyle Clouse recently posted..Blippity- blip- blip- blippr
Hey Kyle thanks for stopping by and commenting. Clean and professional is the way to go.
Hi Rob,
thanks for the very informative post.
I fully agree with you about the pop-up.
I find them very annoying too and it does take longer to actually get to read the article.
Congratulations on the top commentator. Well done!
To your Success
Yorinda
Yorinda recently posted..Welcome
TY Yorinda!
I am glad you enjoyed the post, here is to your success as well.
Rob
Rob,
Thanks so much for such a detailed and informative post. The link to the page load times is a keeper….Not only can you see how fast your site loads, but you can identify which items slow down the load. Really great info here……..
To your continued success,
Robin
Robin van der Merwe recently posted..Video – Tweak Your Blog Comments Setting Never Show “0 Comments” Again
Thanks Robin, I am glad you found value in this post. For me it has become an addiction… LOL Now I am always looking for ways to speed up my site.
The other thing is, Google is considering adding ‘page load speed’ to their algorithm. So you want to make sure your page loads quickly.
Very true and I failed to mention that. Google actually has a tool built into webmaster tools called site performance. It will compare your site with other sites on the internet. Google claims my site is faster that 54% of all sites. Doesn’t sound too impressive does it… LOL I still have a way to go.
Rob,
Excellent post. Thanks for the information. I tested my site with that link, but I don’t have anything to compare it to at the moment.
I agree with you. I hate popups and I have never opted in to one. I go on web sites either to get information or to read the blog post. Pop ups just get in the way and annoy me – and I tend to think less of the person or the site.
Warmly,
Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..Relationship Success – The Noble Eightfold Matrix
Hello Dr Erica, seems the faster the better. Mine loads in a little over 3 seconds as that site sees it. Google claims my site is faster than 54% of all sites on the internet. So I’m guessing we should shoot for around a 2 second load time. With a blog and plugins I’m not sure that’s realistic. I feel the important thing is to make your users visit to your site pleasant. There is nothing worse than waiting for a page to load. Besides a pop up asking for my name and email>>>LOL
Hi Rob,
Great post. I’m not a huge fan of the pop-ups personally. I’ll wait a moment for a blog to load if I have run a search on a topic and the post seems like it is the one I want to read, but I am not going to hang around forever. I think you’ve done a great job delineating the different things that can slow down load time. Right now I don’t have a ton of plug-ins on th site but I do use WP Super Cache and WP Widget Cache based on some recommendations. Thanks for some more thoughts to keep in mind, I’ll have to see if I can reduce load time further. – Rob
Rob Wilson recently posted..Traffic Exchanges – Tracking Results
Rob-
In addition to turning off visitors, if you are advertising your site with things like Google Adwords or other PPC platforms, a slow loading speed may hurt you in the landing page quality score.
This is a fantastic list- I’m so glad you decided to finally write this post
As far a popups- I’ve found that mine tripled my opt-in rate. I think the key is to set the form to only pop-up once (of course, if your visitor clears their cookies, they’ll see it again). But with that kind of increase in leads- it’s hard to just ditch it all together, but being mindful of your reader is key- so don’t make your pop-up come up every time someone visits your page- it’s annoying! Everythin in moderation, right?
Natasha
Hi Rob, Great Post on how you can get your blog to load faster. Many people don’t have a huge attention span if they are online so they will go somewhere else if your blog is slow to load.
Ted recently posted..I Just Launched My Free Seven-Day Boot Camp
Thank you for the awesome post. When I arrive at a blog or website that takes too long to load, I’m gone in 30 seconds. It’s just not worth the wait. It will suppress your SEO also. I like your point about WP themes and colors. Some folks don’t seem to care about readability. Great post with some fantastic tips. Keep them coming.
Angela Arnold recently posted..Professional Development Can Help Brand You as an Expert
Rob,
Thanks for identifying things that slow down a website. I’ll use your tips to check out my site.
I enjoy your blog not only because of your content . . . but also because of its neat, clean appearance, lack of pop-ups and lack of distractions from flashing stuff.
Susan
Susan Redmon recently posted..MLSP Wednesday Webinar- Brothers Swipe First Page Google Rankings in 72 Hours With ZERO Back-Links
Great suggestions Rob. I can’t believe how fast your site loads. You obviously know what you are talking about.
Wendy
Wendy Hewlett recently posted..Focus of Average People vs Successful People
I notice sometimes that when I have certain sites open that have a lot going on that my blog and other websites will take forever to load. It just slows my computer down overall. And yes, your site does load really fast. Great advice here. Thanks for all the good info.
Debbie Wood recently posted..Protect Your Friends Finding Your Friends Safe Is A Good Thing!
You have written a very great post..don’t apologize. i tend to the simple lines as well. My mind gets confused if there is too much visual business. Someone told me that I needed more colour to spic it up.
This is not the first place I have read about simple clean font on whit background. The blogs that are black with whit text are very hard for the brain to transcribe compared to the white ones.
The points on pluggins and speed are new to me however. I would love to know more about how you measure that.
rebeccahappy recently posted..Video Marketing Tip for Local Brick and Mortar Business
Rob, what you said at the end is very important. Nowadays, people are always “go go go”. If you slow them down or cause them to delay with all of the pop-ups and other items, then they will leave your site. I did poke around in your site and it was fast! Great job!
Thanks for the great post. I am so paranoid that my website is going to start loading slowly, so I am very cautious about how many plugins I have. But I did read another comment (I think Andrea’s) and she said she has over 40 plugins, I guess I have a bunch more to go!
Also, I totally agree about the pop-ups for opt ins on some people’s sites these days. Once is enough! If we change our minds about opting in I am sure they have multiple other ways to find out how!!!
Thanks again
Cori Hughes
Cori Hughes recently posted..Are Toxins Wreaking Havoc on My Body
Rob,
It is a drive through society. If they can’t get it now, and get it fast, they are gone.
Man, you hit the nail on the head with pop-ups. I don’t think you’d find anyone that didn’t say they are annoying. What I hate even more is when there is a delay set for the pop up, so you start reading and then get a pop up. Typically these same blogs, have a bar at the top and another at the bottom, leaving very little real estate to put actual content. I find myself leaving rather than slogging through the pop ups and closing, etc.
I think some themes are better produced and thus load faster than others.
Thanks for putting out such a great list.
Jeremiah M. Wean recently posted..USDA Home Loan – Funds Are Here!
Great tips. I totally agree with you. If I see a site taking too long to load I will probably not leave a comment if I’m in a hurry. I especially hate the sites that have videos that clutter up everything.
Hey there,
Great post as it reminds me of when I first set up my blog. It had pretty fast loading times, but then as time went on, I added things which ultimately slowed it down.
Since then I had to really cut back on some things and use some enhancement tools. It’s made it a whole lot better than before.
Now I’m a little more careful as to what I decide to load on it.
Jerome
Jerome Ratliff recently posted..Change Your Mindset From Failure to Success
Hi Rob,
What a great post and so on the money!! I have also clicked off a website because it took too long to load! I believe mine is quite quick but thanks to you I can now check this out and make sure its ok.
Great stuff, thanks alot!
Sue
Sue Collier recently posted..Network Marketing Home Business – Don’t Take Failure Lying Down!
This is so true.I won’t wait for long uploads. I decided to check mine and I believe it’s fine. Thanks for the great information.
Beverly Monical recently posted..Are You In A MasterMind Group
This is just really great information. I am going to install the wp cache plugin you suggested. I found that the onlywire service slowed my blog down. I recently took it off of my blog. The only thing I might dis-agree with, and only because I know a lot of artists who enjoy creative blogging. Sometimes pictures and graphics are important to a blog, not just the content.
I do agree Nicole I think pictures are needed but they should be optimized for we display so they load fast. The pictures I was talking about are the background images that will make the site very difficult to read and take away from a professional look.
Great information Rob!
Alexa says my site loads slower than 90% but I haven’t been able to figure out where the lag is happening so I’m just going to have to pick it apart step-by-step like you suggested. I like host gator as well and I’ll have to look into the cache plug-in you mentioned from Michael. I have a cache plug-in but not sure which one so maybe changing will help.
Oh and I totally agree about the pop-ins. Once is okay but when it’s more than that, I’m gone too
Thanks for sharing!
Laura Paulson recently posted..Top 10 Network Marketing Newbie Mistakes
Rob,
Thanks for the insight. I think my blog is a bit slow, so I better check the plugins I’ve installed.
Ruth @ Marketing Tips, Network Marketing Success Strategies recently posted..What Every Internet Marketer Needs To Know When Starting Out In The Internet Marketing World
Hey Rob, great post! You might want to elaborate a little more on “off-site content” to help these budding socialmedialies understand that that particularly includes the facebook and twitter realtime, and semi realtime widgets. Sites with two FB widgets, two twitter widgets, a google friend connect and a networkedblogs widget combined with an overabundance of plugins can be brought to its knees in a quick hurry! Good stuff!
Kimberly
PS: Look forward to connecting with you on Facebook
Kimberly Castleberry recently posted..Kimberly Featured In Influential Blogger Series
Thank You Rob for this wonderful information! Slow website loading really hurts the visitor. You clearly mentioned the major causes for this problem, so that we can eliminate these in our blogs.
Navya recently posted..Ebook Cover Sample – 31
Completely agree that a slow site puts people off. Google are apparently penalising slow sites, too – so it’s also important to rank well.
One point that I would expand on is when you talk about optimising images. I often find that people think that if an image appears small on screen then it is a small file, when often it is just being shrunk by css.
Physical size makes no difference, only file size.
There is no reason why an image should be above 50k or so.
Richard recently posted..How Much Does a Website Cost