Business Website Performance: Five Common Causes of Slow Website Performance

In today’s vast digital world, website speed and performance are crucial. A slow website is a turn-off, as most visitors expect fast-loading websites. Poor website performance can cause a loss of organic traffic and revenue and increase bounce rate, which negatively impacts search engine ranking. Website speed does not only affect how long visitors stay on your site and convert. It also affects whether they will find your site on the top search engines. As a business website owner, you might have experienced these frustrating, slow website problems. You cannot afford to ignore the performance of your site, since the success of your business is on the line. This guide gives six common causes of slow speed and explains how you can fix them.

1. Web host provider.

One of the major factor of a slow loading website is caused by the web hosting provider. If your servers aren’t highly reliable you can suffer from slow loading speed and site downtime. Your web hosting plan can greatly influence the responsiveness and performance of your website. A web host provider should be able to build your brand name by offering memorable domain names to boost your online presence.

How to fix it: Find a reliable and credible host to host your website. Ideally, a reliable host should ;
• Ensure your website is up and accessible to your users at all times.
• Offer responsive 24/7 customer support in case of technical hitches.
• Have sufficient security features to prevent your site from being hacked.
• Be flexible to accommodate growth and changes.
• Have positive testimonials and reviews from other customers.

2. Unoptimised images.

Unoptimised images are images without descriptive file name and are large in file size. These images, videos and media files tend to occupy a lot of space and can slow the performance of your website.
How to fix: optimize the size of your images and videos by compressing them. Additionally, remove any unnecessary images and videos on your site.

3. You do not have a content delivery network>.

Content delivery networks are servers distributed in strategic geographic locations. They allow quick transfer of website assets needed for loading internet efficiently. A CDN reduces the loading time and speed for visitors from different regions.
How to fix: Sign up for a reliable CDN service.

4. Plugins.

Plugins are software that add capabilities and allow customization programs on web browsers. If you are operating on a WordPress platform, you are undeniably using plugins. Plugins come with high performance, and they can slow down a website.
How to fix: deactivate any unnecessary plugins and download active lightweight plugins.

5. You haven’t enabled browser caching.

Browser caching is a concept that entails story frequently accessed data and files in a location and making them easily accessible. Browser caching improves the loading speed of a website by reducing the amount of time used to access frequently accessed files for returning users.
How to fix it: Enable caching by installing lightweight caching plugins.

6. Too many ads.

Ads are a great way of generating income. Nevertheless, too much of something is poisonous, ads take up space and having too many ads can significantly slow down your website speed and annoy your user.
How to fix: remove non-essential ads and reduce third-party advertisements.

Conclusion

The success and growth of your online business are directly dependent on the performance and speed of your website. By identifying and implementing the six fixes in this guide you can improve the speed of your website, drive more traffic, reduce bouncing rate, rank high in search engine and achieve a better user experience.