Carl and Reece invite your questions
Dear Reece and Carl
I'm considering upgrading my website as it can be slow to load. Please can you advise.
K.
Reece and Carl reply:
It's important to monitor your website's loading speed. A recent study revealed that UK businesses could be losing nearly £60bn a year in sales due to their websites being too slow. 50% of respondents quizzed by Fasthosts cited a website's loading time as the main reason for them abandoning a purchase. Just under half said they wouldn't return to a site if they'd had a bad experience. Retailers will be keen to capitalise on the uplift in e-commerce sales: since COVID began 60% of UK shoppers had reported an increase in the amount they bought online.
Businesses will be forced to take this issue more seriously once the latest Google update goes live. The tech giant will now focus on 'Core Web Vitals', which includes webpage loading times, and penalise websites that load slowly by ranking them lower in its search results.
There are a number of factors to consider if you want to improve your website's loading time. Not all website hosts offer fast loading times so shop around before making a commitment. Optimize all images and reduce the size of any that are too big.
Do a baseline check of your site to see whether any plugins or add ons are draining it. Make sure you turn on browser caching as this will speed up your site's loading time when a customer revisits.