Is your website one of those slow websites? You have two seconds for your website to load before visitors start jumping ship, says Smashing Magazine. In fact, Website Magazine says every passing second after that equates to a seven percent drop in people actually buying stuff from the website. Even Google considers load time when it ranks websites; slower load = lower rank. So if your website isn’t passing the two-second-test across all devices, it’s time to hire a web developer to tweak the following:
Technical Tune Up
By adding or improving the following, your web designer can shave precious seconds off of slow websites and their loading time:
- The Server—Forbes recommends getting your own dedicated server. Yes, it costs a bit, but you may be losing more in customers due to slower load times.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)—If one dedicated server is great, a collection of web servers spread out over multiple locations can boost delivery speed to your users by minimizing the actual travel distance between the user and where the content is stored.
- Image and Text Compression—Moz recommends using Gzip as it can slash load times by nearly 70 percent.
- Responsive Web Design—The right web developer can make your website load faster and smarter across mobile devices and desktops with design that "responds" to the users preferred device.
User Interface Tune Up
On the business end of the website, great graphic designers and content developers can simultaneously beautify and streamline how a user encounters your online presence so that it not only breezes under the two-second window, but entices users to take action.
- Fewer Words, Bigger Dreams—Forbes recommends speaking to the customer's deepest desires instead of listing product features. Show them how your product/service makes life awesome. And do it with just a few words; users don’t read, they scan. Crisp, jargon-free copy equals shorter load times.
- Smart Typography—A great graphic designer can wield colors, sizes and typefaces to boost download speed as well as guide the user visually where you want them.
- The Right Image—While one image may not be worth exactly 1000 words, the right image or infographic can reach into the user’s visual processing brain area much quicker, according to Wired. This will make the user feel like your website is faster too.
Artisan can hook you up with web developers, graphic designers, and content developers who can speed up your website; contact us today to learn more.
