The speed of your website is critical to its success. It impacts some crucial indicators, such as your site's visibility and conversion rate. Optimizing the performance of your website is obviously necessary, but figuring out how to accomplish it can be difficult.
Fortunately, there are several simple speed tests available to help you determine how well your site performs. Although there are several reasons for a slow website, many of them may be remedied using free plugins and dependable web hosting.
In this essay, we'll discuss the common reasons why your website is slow and how to fix slow website. Let's get started!
How to Fix a Slow Website?
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You've probably heard the old adage "slow and steady wins the race," but when it comes to the performance of your website, that's a recipe for disaster. Before understanding how to fix a slow website, you need to know why the website is running slow. Here are our Top 10 Reasons for slow page loading.
1. Server Efficiency
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Your website begins to load from the ground up. When someone clicks on your site, it's analogous to turning the key in a car's engine. Your guest has requested that your engine start. The first thing that happens is that your browser (Firefox, Safari, and so on) sends a ping to your server. It requests all of your information and data so that it can load your website. It will take longer to react if your server's performance is terrible. A slow server will always give you a slow start, no matter how fast everything else is.
Your web host is almost always to blame for poor server performance. A low-cost web host will typically provide you with a shared server, which means you'll be sharing space and resources with a plethora of other websites. One of the main reasons your website is slow is that it's in line with many other sites!
Strikingly is an excellent cloud-based web hosting service that allows you to develop a website for commercial or personal usage. Regardless of the subscription level you choose, your website will perform smoothly and without hiccups. You can speak with one of our Happiness officers to discuss the best hosting options for your website.
2. Location of the Server
If you've ever made a long-distance call, you know how long it takes to connect. This is because the information must physically travel to get there. The data travels through cables and is transmitted through satellites. When you click on a webpage, something similar happens. When you click on a website, a message is sent to the server. You instruct it to load.
Assume your server is located in the United States. When a Japanese visitor clicks on your website, the data must travel all the way across the Pacific. It must make a request to the server. Then it must go all the way back across the ocean to be displayed on their screen. Data travels quickly. But it isn't magic! This results in a slow website.
3. A Great Deal of Traffic
If your website is seeing a high volume of visitors, it will eventually slow down. At the moment, your web server can only serve a limited number of individuals at once. It's similar to standing in line at a store. The more customers who come into the establishment, the slower they are served. Not only that, but the shop must then bring in additional resources to assist. To serve everyone, they have to call in extra help from the rear. But now the backside is slowing down as well. On your website, the same thing occurs. Your server will try to handle all of the increased traffic, but it will eventually result in a slow website.
4. Extra-large Images (and Complex File Format)
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Do you recall the days of dial-up internet? It may take up to a minute to load a large image, one tiny bit at a time! It was excruciating! Things have improved since the advent of broadband, but the fundamental rule remains. When you ping the server, it will begin transferring each component of the webpage to your browser's screen. The server will host content such as text and photos. This is analogous to our shopkeeper bringing your inventory from the back room. It's simple when you think of it this way. Large, hefty things will take longer to transport. A huge image will take a long time to load. If you have a lot of large photographs on your website, each one adds extra load time.
The file format is also significant in this case. JPG, PNG, and GIF pictures can be loaded quickly by browsers. TIFF and BMP, on the other hand, will consume significant amounts of load time. Thus resulting in a slow website. Stay away from them!
Strikingly allows you to prioritize picture size specifications, ensuring that everything loads smoothly on your website. You can reduce the image's size without sacrificing its quality.
5. Density of Code
You might be noticing a pattern here. Large, dense elements will cause your website to load slowly. The code that makes your site is one of the densest aspects of it. If you're familiar with CSS, HTML, and Javascript, you'll recognize that your website's design is supported by a massive amount of code. For example, Facebook alone has 60 million lines of code.
6. JavaScript Render-Blocking Is Delaying Page Loads
JavaScript is the programming that allows users to interact with your website. Your website would be quite dull if it didn't have it. However, if left unoptimized, JavaScript can cause your pages to load slowly in consumers' browsers. When a browser shows a web page, it must first halt and fully load any JavaScript files that it sees. As a result, "render-blocking JavaScript," or JavaScript that results in a slow website, is produced.
To cope with render-blocking JavaScript, there are three options:
- Remove external JavaScript files and replace them with inline JavaScript.
- Use asynchronous loading to allow JavaScript to load independently of the rest of the page.
- Hold off on loading JavaScript until the remainder of the page is visible to the user.
Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages. In general, using inline JavaScript sparingly will enhance page speed. Because files are not loaded in any specific order, asynchronous loading might pose problems. As a result, delaying JavaScript is usually the preferred technique.
7. You are Not Utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
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A Content Delivery Network (CDN) comprises multiple servers that are strategically distributed around the country. You can store copies of your website on them so that people far away from your main server can rapidly load its pages. There are several CDN alternatives available for your WordPress site. Cloudflare is a well-known solution, as is the Jetpack CDN for photos and videos. Customers on our DreamPress Plus and Pro plans will receive unlimited Jetpack-powered CDN usage.
Furthermore, if your website uses jQuery, you can load it from a CDN rather than your own server. Because jQuery utilizes significantly fewer lines of code than JavaScript to achieve the same results, it can be highly effective for increasing the speed of your slow website. The two most common jQuery CDN alternatives are Google and Microsoft.
Strikingly allows you to host your platform on a CDN. Our infrastructure ensures that the Strikingly websites load promptly regardless of the source or location of access.
8. Your Database has an Excessive Amount of Overhead
Overhead refers to unnecessary elements in your website's database, such as logs, transients, and other entries from plugins or themes, which can accumulate over time. When there is too much "overhead," database searches can take longer than necessary. It can even cause your webserver to time out while waiting for a response from your database in some situations. This can be avoided by optimizing your database and minimizing unnecessary overhead. Most web servers allow you to use your hosting account to access the database management tool phpMyAdmin. If phpMyAdmin does not allow you to optimize your tables, you can use the WordPress Command Line Interface (WP-CLI).
9. Your Website's CSS is Inefficient
CSS – the code responsible for decorating your site's pages — like JavaScript, can cause slow page loading if unoptimized. There are a few techniques you can try to fix slow website:
- Combine many external CSS files into one or a few files if you have them.
- Remove external CSS and replace it with inline CSS.
- Use "media types" to specify when to load specific CSS files.
Inline CSS, like inline JavaScript, is only helpful for tiny sections of code. If you have numerous huge CSS files, you should not attempt to include them all in your HTML file. Specifying media types and integrating your external CSS files (if you have multiple) should have a greater influence.
10. OPcache Is Disabled
OPcache is a caching engine built into the PHP programming language. If you use PHP on your site, having OPcache enabled can speed up its loading and, as a result, the loading of your slow website. OPcache is enabled by default if you host your website with shared hosting services.
Create a Website with Strikingly
Strikingly is a platform that has been working tirelessly to improve website statistics. Over the years, our technical staff has optimized website speed. On Google PageSpeed Insights, the majority of our platform's websites have a score of greater than 90. A high Google PageSpeed score boosts your SEO while also ensuring that your visitors have a positive customer experience on both desktop and mobile versions.
Conclusion
Unoptimized pictures, a large number of HTTP requests, bulky coding, and JavaScript difficulties, to mention a few, all result in the website running slow. It can be tough to determine what is causing a slow website. Whatever the primary cause, you should leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of the problem because failure to do so could be the difference between an extra $1000/month in revenue.
