What Is Page Speed?
Page speed is how quickly a page on your website loads onto a visitor’s device. Google, the most widely-used browser, uses a set of factors called Core Web Vitals to measure this:
- Largest Contentful Paint – how quickly the main content appears
- First Input Delay – the time it takes for your site to respond to a user’s first action
- Cumulative Layout Shift – how much your page layout moves while loading
Why Page Speed Matters
Roughly 73% of mobile users have run into slow-loading websites. A website is considered slow if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. If your website is slow, you could be losing customers. Here’s why:
- User Experience: Most users want to start immediately. They will move on to another site if yours is too slow.
- Search Rankings: Google uses page speed to decide how high your site ranks in its search results. This is true for both mobile and desktop sites.
- Paid Search Traffic: If your website is slow, your ads may be shown less often and cost more.
- Mobile Traffic: Most people access the internet from mobile devices, and these websites are slower than desktop ones.
What Slows Down Your Site
Certain factors can slow down your website, such as:
- Images that aren’t optimized
- Large file sizes
- Inefficient web hosting
- Complex themes and designs
- Embedded media from other sites
- Heavy use of widgets
Boosting Your Website’s Speed
Luckily, there are ways to make your website load faster. Here are a few essentials:
- Switch to faster hosting: A faster web host can load your site quicker. It can make a big difference, especially if your host is slow or overcrowded.
- Choose a simple, SEO-optimized theme: Less complexity means faster load times. Themes with clean code and minimal design elements can significantly improve your site’s speed.
- A Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN will help load your site faster. A content delivery network stores copies of your site at different locations and allows users to access it from the nearest server.
- Minify and externalize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Minifying involves removing unnecessary characters in your site’s code, reducing its size, and increasing its speed.
- Compress and reduce files and images: Again, smaller is faster. Using compression tools, you can reduce the file size of images and other resources without affecting their quality.
- Enable lazy loading for images: This means images load only when needed, only some at a time.
Speed Is Game-Changing for Business
The loading speed of your company website can be a game-changer for your business. It affects how users experience your site, your rank in search results, and your ads’ performance. Focusing on speed isn’t optional if you want a successful business website. It’s essential. Don’t let slow load times hold you back. If you invest in website loading speed, your business growth also increases.
