7 Reasons Why Your Website is Slow and How to Fix It

You’ve just finished working on your new website, but when you try to visit any page, it takes ages to load. And to your surprise, the internet connection is quite fast. So, why are some websites so slow?

This is a multi-faceted issue that every web developer must face at least once when creating a WordPress website.

So, this article will go over the most common reasons why your website is running at snail speed. You will also figure out the solutions to these problems.

Flash content

The first thing you don't want when browsing is a website with outdated flash content. You will get multiple notifications to update your flash player just to use one website. Although flash players are necessary if you want to create interactive materials for users, it often poses massive loading issues.

When creating a site for a personal blogger, essay writer, or commercial, try to limit the number of flash content. They are often too bulky and add to the website’s overall load time.

Solution

To avoid slow loading websites, reduce the size of the flash content. Consider getting rid of them entirely. You can use other flash player alternatives like HTML5.

HTML5 is more compatible and adaptable to the newer browser configurations. You can store your content across multiple windows without having to reload it after every session. Also, HTML5 doesn’t require extra plugins to run. Most importantly, it is optimized for use on mobile devices.

Media content

We all love graphics because they add extra verve to written content - an extra layer of context. However, large-volume media content can make your site crawl like a mule hauling bricks. This is the main reason for a website loading slow.

Picture how slow your phone is when you have low memory. That’s how your website works. If you load multiple high-resolution images and videos, they will drastically affect your website’s load time.

Solution

To avoid this lag, focus on optimizing your media content for the web. Here are some useful tips to remember:

1. Always choose JPEG over PNG or GIF. Images in the JPEG format take up less memory than GIFs and PNGs. Read here for more reasons.
2. Remember to choose “optimize for web” or “export for web” when exporting your graphics from Photoshop or Illustrator.
3. Reduce the image size to a considerable amount using an online image converter or dedicated plugin to compress images.
4. You can always use embedded links for video content instead of loading them directly on your page.

Not using CDN

CDN (content delivery network) is a network of distributed servers specialized in delivering web content to users in high resolution. It cuts out the amount of memory and bandwidth consumed when loading any page on your website.

Solution

Using a CDN is always a viable option since it increases your website’s speed while decreasing the latency. There are many CDN providers (both free and paid) out there. You can refer to this post to learn how to use it.

Numerous ads

Ad placement is one of the fastest and most reliable means of monetizing your website. However, flooding it with ads will make the website slow to load by increasing the bandwidth consumption. Every ad placed on your site is an additional HTTP request.

Solution

Try to strike the perfect balance between monetization and compatibility when placing ads. Moreover, a site with so many ads is just plain annoying to use.

Terrible coding skills

Most inexperienced coders and developers often use multiple lines of text instead of a simplified expression. In reality, every line of code affects your website’s performance. Also, some custom themes come with a lot of plugins that decrease your website’s loading speed.

Solution

Always minify your code. Get rid of white spaces and every unnecessary comment. Use more compact expressions instead of multi-line functions, especially when working with Javascript. Reduce the number of plugins in your code and strip down the bloated code to the essentials.

Besides, you can try any fast and lightweight theme that is already optimized like eStar.

Terrible site hosting

That’s what you get for choosing the cheap option!

If you choose a cheap hosting provider, you will go through several headaches trying to bring your site up to speed.

The chances are that these cheap hosting service providers don’t have enough servers for individual users.

Solution

Focus on using a more user-oriented service. If you have a small business, you’ll need reliable hosting to keep the site running at all times. The speed of E-commerce websites, portfolio websites, and blogs can also suffer from poor hosting.

Poor caching technique

Caching is a data storage technique that involves storing copies of data in ‘caches’ for a specified period. If you don’t have a cache on your site, every HTTP request will fetch the data from the source from scratch during every session. This affects your website's performance massively.

Solution

Use caching to serve up web pages. After the data has been fetched initially, every subsequent HTTP request will fetch the content from storage.

But if you’re a non-techie, just install a cache plugin, they can help you do it quickly and easily.

Conclusion

Your website’s slowness can be attributed to compatibility issues and large file sizes. Always endeavor to keep your content size to the barest minimum. Pay extra for a reliable hosting provider with faster and personalized servers. Keep your code clean and lean. Ultimately, optimize every content for use on the web before adding them to your site.