Are your web pages taking their own sweet time to load? Sure, that works if people aren’t rushed. But the truth is, most are. Which means they expect – no, need pages to fly into view. Concerned digital marketers should take note of Google’s advice – loadings should take 3 seconds or less. Exceed this limit, and according to the latest stats, half your visitors will leave. Now imagine what that’ll do to conversion rates.
Once you confirm the slowness of page loadings, you’ll likely crave improvements. Of course, you first must determine the problem’s root causes. Common culprits are slow servers, oversized images, and excessive redirects. No, this isn’t the end of the list by any means. It’s imperative to hunt for all relevant issues.
During the search, you might discover an oversupply of HTTP requests. In the website world, each request links to a specific page component, such as an image. Now here’s the rub – the lion’s share of loading time is consumed by downloading these HTTP links. Clearly, success-oriented digital marketers must minimize the number of requests. True, this objective could entail some redesign work. But in the long run, making the effort is better than losing conversions.
File size reduction is another facilitator of quick loading times. The process is fairly straightforward – simply combine smaller files into larger files, and voila -- you’ve instantly reduced file sizes across the board. Consequently, you’ve proportionately increased loading speed.
As a final consideration, be sure to check on your website’s “time to first byte” (or TTFB). This is the interval a browser must wait before receiving its first byte of information from a server. Google advises setting the interval to less than 200 milliseconds. Now what could be easier?
If you have questions or comments about improving the loading speed of web pages, or about any other brand-related topic, feel free to send them our way.
You can connect with the Young Company team at 949-376-8404 #4033 or bart@youngcompany.com. And be sure to follow us for the latest brand marketing news and tips.