Time is of the essence: how to reduce your website’s loading time

A website’s loading time is one of its most important characteristics. Your viewers’ time is precious, and they’ll ‘bounce’ off your site pretty quickly if they have to wait too long for it to load. They may even quit the site if a small part of it takes too long to load. Who can blame them? The main appeal of the internet is that it makes the near-instantaneous transmission and retrieval of information possible. Understandably, web users don’t like to be kept waiting. Minimising your site’s loading time is therefore a vital part of website design.

That’s why we’ve created a list of tips for making sure that your site is fast enough to meet your viewers’ expectations.

1. Choose a simple layout

Clean, uncluttered layouts aren’t just easy to navigate and pleasant to look at, they also help your site load faster! Remember that not everyone has super-fast broadband or a speedy computer; too many animated graphics, features and visual effects can cripple the speed at which your webpages load for some viewers. So you should make an effort to remove unnecessary clutter from your site in order to ensure that all your site visitors experience reasonable loading times. Just remember not to throw out vital content, such as user-friendly videos and genuinely engaging images, when you get rid of the superfluous content!

2. Check the speed of your video player

If your site uses videos, it’s vitally important that they load quickly. Videos are a very effective way of engaging with prospective customers, but videos that are slow to load can drive them away from your site. The most obvious and common reason that online videos load slowly is that the video player they use is inefficient. To avoid this problem, regularly check that your site’s video player is fast enough. Don’t be afraid to upgrade to a quicker one if you have to!

3. Always make sure you have enough servers

If your site attracts lots of visitors, it may start to put a strain on your servers. The more viewers a website has, the more servers it needs to handle them all. Whether you have your own servers or rent space on servers from a provider, you need to make sure you can handle the number of web users who want to view your site! No matter how perfect your site’s design is, it will still be ruined for your viewers if it isn’t supported by the right number of servers. Always underpin good website design with the resources to handle high volumes of web traffic.

If you can reduce the time it takes your website to load, you’re far more likely to grab and keep the attention of visitors. Good luck!