How to fix a slow loading website - 7 ways to speed up a website.

By Timothy Allsworth SEO Web Design January 12, 2018

Web designer – Brisbane

We all ask these questions: Why is my website loading slowly? How do I speed up my website? How to fix a slow website?

There are major web design aspects that can slow your website loading times down. In this blog, you can find out ways of speeding up your website loading times through different techniques and methods.

It can be a painful experience, especially when you find out that users are going to other websites out of frustration. Slow-loading websites can cause user frustration but there are many ways to decrease your websites loading times. this can be achieved through good hosting choice, compressing images, using plugins if you are using WordPress, and many more. Some of the major slowdowns can be:

Images
Server location
Server performance
Plugins and extensions
3rd party applications
High traffic
Database bloat

1. Images are the most resource-intensive part of your website. They take up the most space and the most loading time. Resizing and compressing your images for better website loading times is one of the most important processes for getting your website to load quicker. Resize your images so that they are the same size as what they appear on the screen. You can do this by opening up Paint which is a free image editing tool on windows. Instructions on how to resize images using paint.

Use an image compression utility such a TinyJPG or this image compressor from Website Planet to compress your images after you have reduced their size in Paint, this further reduces their size and improves your loading time then you can upload them. By doing this you will see a decrease in the loading time of your website.

Or if you are using WordPress, use this great free plugin for image optimisation: Resmushit Image optimiser for WordPress

2. Server Location can be an influence on website loading times. Let us say for example you are in Australia, and your website is hosted on North American servers, it takes more time for your website to connect to those servers as they are thousands of KM’s away. Try to get hosting that is located inside of Australia or inside of your country.

I would suggest using the Australian hosting provider Zuver Hosting (this is not an affiliate link, I do not get paid every time somebody clicks on these links, I added this hosting link here because I have been using Zuver for quite some time.). They have great cpanel hosting and have a great configuration interface.

3. Server performance. Most websites are located on what we call shared hosting. Shared hosting is pretty much what its name implies, its shared. Meaning we are sharing our resources with other websites, so we only have limited bandwidth and space, this is great for low traffic websites or small businesses if your business is growing it may be time to upgrade your hosting to a VPS, which does not share resources. Ask your hosting provider about it.

4. Plugins and extensions. Plugins and extensions which load from your website can add extra drain on your server. So get rid of those plugins you don’t need.

5. 3rd party applications, such as booking systems, social media plugins or plugins that come from an external website can slow your website down. The best way to handle this is to get quality 3rd party applications from reputable sources. Sometimes spending that little extra can get you quick loading 3rd party applications.

6. High traffic, if your business is expanding, and your website is getting good traffic, you may need to upgrade to better hosting, such as VPS. Ask your hosting provider about it.

7. Database bloat. Databases store all the information you have on a website, such as links to images stored on your website, text content, plugin information and much more. If you have a large website, your database can get bloated with thousands of entries, it takes time for the website to scan the database on large databases and this can lead to slower loading times for websites. Even if you scrape off a half a second by using a plugin called WP-Optimize, it can help towards that ultimate goal of getting your website to load faster. WP-Optimize scan and optimises your database by deleting unused data such as post autosaves, pages and posts that you have deleted and more, you can even delete old database tables that are unused from old plugins. Make sure backup your database using their suggested backup plugin though before you do this, just in case you make a mistake.

There are many other ways to improve your website loading times, some aspects of loading times can only be achieved by a professional web developer through programming code or by professional techniques, but the above can help with your loading times. If you would like us to help with redesigning your website, loading times, or anything else to do with web design contact us. Our rates are extremely competitive and affordable.

If you are using WordPress then I would suggest using cache plugins, they reduce the loading times by caching your website, this means that the website downloads images and other content onto your computer the first time you visit, then when you visit next time it only downloads newer content, thereby reducing the website load times. These plugins can also minify the programming code, reducing the page size. They are easy to use and install and in most instances can be set up with a few clicks. Check them out here: WordPress Cache plugins

Use this online tool to test your page’s loading time. A good score is around 80%, but try to get it to as close to 100% as possible.

Website loading times are one of the biggest factors that determine your rankings in Google and other major search engine search results. The others being mobile responsive design and content marketing or content writing. If you implement these into your website and marketing campaigns, your website will see a significant gain in rankings and therefore increased viewers of your website and increased interaction with your business.