How about starting your own blog? Not only is it a great way to express yourself, but it can improve your writing skills as well!
Once you've set it up, you'll want to put yourself out there in order to drive traffic. There are many ways that you can do this—for instance, you can share your page on social media.
That won't do you any good, though, if you have a slow website. People have short attention spans; they'll leave before the page finishes loading.
Are you experiencing this issue? Want to know how to speed things up?
It's easier than you think—all you have to do is tweak a few things. Keep reading to learn more!
Here are a few reasons why your website might be slow and how to fix it.
A website's speed depends on the server. If the server's performance is poor, it will take much longer to respond.
This issue almost always boils down to your web host. For instance, it's not uncommon for you to have to share a server with dozens of other websites—this would lower your speed as you're competing for the same resources.
What should you do? Move to a better web host!
Once you ping the server, it will begin to transfer bits of the website to your browser—this includes images.
Related Post: Is Your Website Affected? How Google's New Page Speed Criteria Punishes Slow Loading Websites
As you can imagine, large images take longer to load than small images. For each of them, you'll be adding a bit of extra loading time.
You want to consider the file format as well. For instance, JPG and PNG files tend to load more quickly than BMP and TIFF ones.
Plugins are great—they allow you to customize your site quickly and easily (assuming that you're using Wordpress).
You don't want to use too many, though—that can actually affect your website's performance. More often than not, it's the javascript behind the plugin that's the culprit.
Considering this, you only want to use the ones that are absolutely necessary. In other words, remove the plugins that you don't need.
Flash presentations can add value to a website if used properly.
Too much, however, can lead to slow loading times. As it is, most users will end up leaving the page.
Consider skipping the flash altogether. It's pretty outdated anyway.
Adding embedded content such as videos is a great way to engage visitors.
Keep in mind, though, that they can slow down your website. Why? They have to retrieve data packets from external servers. Depending on the file size, it can take a while.
Having to deal with a slow website can be frustrating. Fortunately, it's not too difficult to troubleshoot the issue—you just need to know what to look for.
It might take a little bit of time, but it's definitely worth it. After all, the faster your website, the more likely you'll get visitors!
What worked the best for your site? Let us know in the comments below!
