Why is my website so slow?.

There are many reasons why your website could be slow, and we’ll discuss some of the main ones in this article. As frustrating as it is, the good news is that a slow website can be resolved with a little TLC. We’ll look at how in a minute, but first, let’s start at the beginning with why website speed is so important.

You probably don’t need us to tell you, but no-one likes waiting around for a website to load. In fact, according to research by Google, 53% of visitors will leave a site if it doesn’t load within three seconds, and the rest will follow soon after that. And it’s not just the public at large who feel this way – Google doesn’t like it when you make people wait either.

Google recently made speed an SEO ranking signal and it is therefore likely to become an increasingly significant factor in the future, so it’s one thing you really can’t do without. Your website needs to meet the Core Web Vitals standards for optimisation.

The slower your website, the higher the bounce rate = the greater the impact may be on your SEO rankings.

Source: Reviews42, Unbounce, Hubspot, Invisionapp

If your website is taking longer than a second or two to load, then it’s very likely that your site is not fully optimised, or something isn’t working as it should be.

There are two main reasons why your website might not be up to speed.

Website Hosting

Before we get into this, a quick word about what we mean by website hosting. Think of it like renting a space on the internet that users can visit; your digital office or virtual shop front if you will.

Slow web hosting is the chief suspect for a website that lags. If your website is hosted on a server which doesn’t have enough resources for everyone using it, performance will be impacted. Our customers don’t have that problem here at Insight because our servers use the much faster Solid State Drive storage, which significantly improves website loading times.

Server uptime also impacts this. If your website is down then your speed is effectively zero, so any server downtime is incredibly detrimental to your website, and not to mention your business operations. If your website goes down too often, the bots that crawl it may come across the resulting server error and assume the site is permanently unavailable, which can have massive implications for your SEO.

There are various reasons why your website might go down, such as missing/expired SSL certificates, malware or other server issues. Insight can provide you with an A Grade SSL certificate in addition to your website care plan, and run daily malware scans and investigate any server issues. This is supported by our uptime monitor, which will tell us immediately when a website might down for any reason.

Poor Maintenance

But sorting the website hosting alone isn’t enough. You also need to maintain the ‘shop’ itself to make sure it’s all in good working order, ready to welcome customers and give them a top notch experience when they get there.

There are many factors that could be impacting this from a maintenance point of view.

• Your website is bloated with too many unnecessary or out of date themes, plugins, scripts and unused codes
• Not carrying out relevant platform updates as required – for example your website’s themes, plugins or platform version haven’t been updated
• Website bugs and glitches could be affecting the speed, these can often easily be resolved by an experienced developer
• Slow running individual elements such as images or contact forms
• No speed optimisation has been performed – even when blatant issues are fixed, your website may still be slow because it hasn’t been optimised

We can look after your rented space (website hosting) and the upkeep of your shop itself (website care plan), to make sure everything is performing just as it should for maximum website speed.

This includes fast, reliable and secure hosting, website audits and optimisation,

We will first carry out a website audit to identify all potential issues, and resolve them, and then run regular tests, checks and updates.

The website care plan is just £1.67 + VAT per day and includes:

• WordPress website and email hosting on SSD server
• Monthly updates of WordPress core, plugins, themes and PHP (based on update compatibility)
• Plugin management
• Monthly website backups
• Website migration
• Website troubleshooting
• Technical support
• Maintenance mode
• Broken link tracking
• Periodic contact form testing
• Security monitoring
• Monthly website care report
• 30 minutes of design and/or developer time which can be carried forward for a maximum of three months

Advanced speed packages

You can supercharge your website with our advanced speed packages. This process takes around four to six weeks and will look at things like implementing caching, database optimisation, lazy loading scripts or media, advanced image compression and more. This package is ideal for businesses who want to win at SEO rankings and achieve a high conversion rate – it’s especially suitable for E-commerce websites.

Every day that your website isn’t performing is likely to be costing you customers and sales. Book an appointment with Insight to see how we can help you get the most from your website investment.