Why You’re Losing Website Traffic (Without Even Realizing It)

When it comes to web browsing, Tom Cruise said it best: “I feel the need…the need for speed.” Visitors don’t like to be kept waiting. It takes as little as a second of delay for users to navigate away. If your website doesn’t load quickly, you could be losing visitors. So how do you know if your website is loading slowly and driving visitors away? There are a few warning signs.

1. Your code is too long

CSS, JavaScript and HTML are the behind-the-scenes superstars that make your website look its best. Like any written language, if they’re riddled with fluff they slow down reading speed. In this case, computers take longer to read your code and make your website load more slowly. Moz recommends removing the following from your code to increase your page speed:

• Spaces
• Commas
• Code comments
• Formatting
• Unused code
• Other unnecessary characters 

This step isn’t a simple DIY – you’ll want to have your web developer tackle this update to avoid accidentally removing vital code.

2. Your images aren’t optimized

A picture is worth a thousand words. But it shouldn’t take the same time to load a picture as it would to say a thousand words. Images can drastically slow down website speed. Google recommends following basic guidelines when it comes to images:

• Resize your images before you upload them to your site
• Use one of the three universally supported image types: GIF, PNG or JPG
• Save images on your computer in the smallest possible size 

3. Your website can’t be compressed

As Hubspot puts it, “Enabling compression is like putting your website into a zip file.” Compression is a server setting that will drastically improve your loading speed. How you compress your website will depend on what type of website it is, what your hosting agreement is and what the backend settings are on your website. Reach out to your web developer on the best approach to compress your website.

4. You have too many redirects

In the course of a website’s lifetime, pages change around. If you’ve ever edited the name of a page or moved where it sits in your navigation, your web developer likely set up a redirect. However, too many redirects can negatively impact speed. Moz points out: 

Each time a page redirects to another page, your visitor faces additional time waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. For example, if your mobile redirect pattern looks like this: “example.com -> www.example.com -> m.example.com -> m.example.com/home,” each of those two additional redirects makes your page load slower.

Skip the runaround. Talk to your web developer about how to reduce the number of redirects.

Want even more speed tips? Check out Dave’s BizzyWebinar all about speed optimization.