Do you know how quick your website loads?

Here are my top recommendations for testing your website load speed:

Pingdom Website Speed Test: With this tool, you should aim to get a reduced site load time as well as a reduced number server requests. This tool also compares your website speed to other websites online.

GTMetrix: This tool analyzes your website speed using Google Page speed Insights and Yslow and gives you a rating from A to F. It also offers suggestions for improvement.

Webpage Analyzer: This tool gives you information on your page size and website download time, and it offers suggestions on how to improve your site load time.

Google Pagespeed Insights: You should aim towards a score closer to 100. It also has a mobile speed test tool that you can use.

Yslow: This tool analyzes your website speed

How did your website do?

Do your web pages load in less than 4 seconds?

Yes? Great keep it up!  I recommend that you check your page load speed every now and then to just to be sure.

No? Let’s look at it more closely.

What can you do to improve the speed of your web pages?

The first simple fix would be to properly format and compress images which can save many bytes of data.

If that doesn’t make your website quicker, you will need to get with a web designer to help you out. Is it worth it? Yes. Google has indicated that site speed is one of the algorithm used to rank pages. What does that mean? The slower your website, the lower it can show in a Google search result. No one want to lose business to a competitor because of that.

If that wasn’t bad enough, consider this: 74% of people on mobile would not view your website if it takes more than 5 seconds to load. That means they just walked away from your website, without even looking at it!! 74% is significant… and well worth the investment.

Your web designer will need to consider some of the following to increase the speed of your site:

• Clean up your code
• Minify HTML & CSS coding
• Utilize GZIP Compression
• Minimize redirects
• Relocate scripts
• Limit plugins
• Upgrade hosting

And while you do all this, keep in mind that for every second you shave off of your load time, you’ll boost customer confidence and trust.

Yes, a few seconds really can make all the difference!

If you have any questions, please contact me directly at brian@upstreammarketing.net.