Here’s how to fix that.
I don’t know about you, but when I get a visitor to my website, the thought that I might lose them before they read a single word just because of slow technology freaks me out. Imagine having a physical storefront that successfully attracted the attention of lots of people, but many of the people who wanted to walk into your store never did because when they started to come in, they found that the door to your store was hard to open. Would you get the door fixed? Yeah, like yesterday you’d get the door fixed. It’s the same with site speed. It’s totally something you can improve and it’s hurting your business if you don’t.
Click Here to Get Your Free Guide: “Five Steps to a Faster Site”
It used to be that if your site loaded in five seconds or less, your site was fast enough to keep new site visitors quite happy. However, as technology moves along, people’s expectations grow. And now the time to meet or beat is three seconds. Really, three seconds or you’ll lose people? Yes. Actually, when Google did speed testing back in 2009 (you know, when speed didn’t matter nearly as much as it does now) they learned that even a half-second delay negatively affects the user’s experience.
Kissmetrics reports that 25% of visitors will abandon a site if it takes four seconds to load or more. This means that if it takes $1.00 per person to get a visitor to my site, for example, I am wasting $25 out of every $100 I spend due to a slow site. Oh, heck no.
I tested my site and realized my site was sometimes taking up to 6 seconds to load. You know what that meant? You guessed it. More than one in four were leaving my site before they even had a chance to look around. How much more? Around 1 out of every 3 visitors. Once I knew I had a site speed problem I got down to business and figured out what needed to happen to improve things. The result? I now have a site that loads somewhere between .9 and 1.9 seconds, and so can you.
Do you know how fast your site loads? It’s time to find out! Here’s how you can do this quickly and for free.
- Go to GTMetrix.com
- Put in your website’s domain name.
- Note your results.
- Run the test again two more times. Before I worked on speeding up my site, I ran a GTMetrix test on my home page three times. I tested out at 3.6 seconds, 4.7 seconds, and 5.6 seconds.
- Now go to your site and navigate to a page like “about us,” “services,” or “products.” Copy the full URL of the page and paste it into in GTMetrix.com. Run the test three times.
- Average your results for your home page. Average your results for the other page on your site that you tested. Congratulations! Now you know your average load time for your home page and interior page.
If you are done losing visitors due to something as simple as your site’s speed, I’ve created a guide that shows you exactly how I got my site wicked fast so you can do the same. I admit, some things in this guide are a little techy, but some are super easy. Get your copy of the six steps I used by clicking below!
Click Here to Get Your Free Guide: “Five Steps to a Faster Site”
While my guide has all the details with exactly how to do each step, here’s a quick overview of what can be slowing your site down:
- Big File Sizes
Even a 2-inch x 2-inch image can be large in file size if it isn’t optimized. Most of us are in a big hurry when we are working on our site so we get the image we like ready for the site and upload it, without making the image as small in file size as possible beforehand. If you are asking your website to display huge files, you are probably causing a big problem for your site speed. Make sure you’ve taken the extra step to optimize the file size before you load it on your site. - Nasty Plugins and Add-ons
WordPress and many other types of websites allow you to add features to your site. These features require your site to think a little bit longer to make the feature work. After you add a new feature, run a test to find out how it affected your site’s load time. - Slow Web Host
You know how you can use the same program on two different computers and the program can run faster on one computer compared to the other? It’s the same for websites. If your site is running slow, you might want to upgrade your hosting. Check with your website host to find out if this might help your site’s speed. If they say it will and you do decide to upgrade, run a test before you upgrade and then run a test after you upgrade to confirm that the extra dollars you are spending are actually making a difference. - The Location You Are at Right Now
Yes, if you are using an internet connection, like at a coffee shop, that happens to be slow, your site will load slow. If you are close geographically to your website’s host, you are likely to experience a faster load time than if you a located far away. I talk about a solution for the geographic issue in my download.
Each Improvement is a Step in the Right Direction
I mentioned three things to look into above. You might not have time to do all of that right now, and that’s totally okay. Remember that if you can improve just one aspect now and improve your site’s load time by even one second, you are greatly helping your business.
To make the process as easy as possible, download my guide below, choose the thing that looks the easiest for you to tackle first, follow my steps, and get it done.
Click Here to Get Your Free Guide: “Five Steps to a Faster Site”
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