Understanding Loading Times: Why They Matter
Most people think loading times are just a back-end problem. A technical thing for software engineers to figure out. I Suppose but your website’s loading time directly impacts how many customers you get - and keep coming back for more.
If that’s not a big deal, I don’t know what is. But it seems like the world has caught on. Did you know that loading times are one of the most highly tracked web performance metrics. Even content management systems like WordPress and Shopify let you track your page speeds right from your dashboard.
More or less. These platforms also tell you where you can improve your scores. And all of this is because the longer a website takes to load, the more likely people are to close it.
There’s also something else that happens with long loading times - when people try to keep their customers, they often forget about their new ones. And every time someone has a bad experience with your website, they may share it with others who haven’t heard of your brand before. You know what that means. All things considered, fixing your loading times is fairly straightforward if you know where to look.
There’s more on this in the rest of the article, but here’s something to keep in mind: as often as not, it’s not something going wrong - it’s something missing or left unfinished during development or migration. And this seems to be true across platforms and websites.
Optimize Images for Faster Loading
You know what everyone does. They upload images the same way they took them with their phone, DSLR, or laptop. Maybe even with their favourite image editing tools that absolutely refuse to compress anything smaller than 5MB.
The result - someone’s otherwise beautiful site just chokes under the weight of these gigantic images that take forever to load or don’t load at all. More or less. Funnily enough, no one notices this till a user leaves negative feedback because it was taking them an hour to scroll through a gallery.
Now most people will tell you there’s a correct way to upload images and nothing else will do. That’s not quite true. There are several ways to make sure your website stays functional but also shows off your original, high-res images in all their glory.
It takes a bit of trial and error but things like changing file types, resizing images, compressing images or all three can help you find what’s optimal for your site - and users. Of course, this can get confusing when you’ve already uploaded a bunch of heavy pictures and your site is now getting progressively slower by the week. You may have to delete some or all of those if your dashboard tells you they’re consuming more space than you’d like. And some creators don’t want to go through the heartbreak of deleting old content which is almost never also understandable.
But it’s worth noting that while losing content on your website may be an emotional loss, it can actually open up new creative directions for you as a creator. Especially now that there’s easier access to free creative tools that help with compression, resizing and editing so nothing gets lost when it goes from device to website.
Minimize HTTP Requests for Efficiency
Now, people love new things on a website - don’t we all. But each time you ask for something new, the site has to make a trip to its server to fetch it. That trip is an HTTP request and every round trip the site makes eats up loading times.
And there’s so many opportunities to make new requests - add a script, call for CSS files, upload media, add links, you get the drift. Fewer trips mean faster load times. The way I see it, so if you have a lean website - a less is more sort of thing - there are fewer requests and it loads quickly. If you go on adding unnecessary elements to a website, that’s more trips and therefore slower loading times.
One request might not add much time but when they start piling up - like 15-20 requests or even more - that’s when your websites becomes really slow. The solution appears to be straightforward - reduce HTTP requests. But if you’re not a developer, this isn’t simple or easy.
Plus, there are some considerations around how design could affect this. For example, if your font isn’t standard or system-loaded then it’ll need an additional request for it to load correctly on every device and OS out there. Or say you want interactivity with scripts and they can only be loaded externally so each will add additional time. Or maybe images really need to be fetched externally for some reason.
So yes there are times where less isn’t more but wherever possible check what can be loaded in the system without an additional request and just stick to things that are essential for user experience.
Leverage Browser Caching Strategies
Here’s the thing about browser caching - there’s quite a bit of confusion and misunderstanding. I Think if i had a dollar for every time i heard “clear your cache” from a customer service rep, i’d probably have enough for a trip to tokyo. Caching is not about saving one image to make the next load faster.
In reality, caching is more about storing several parts of a website - images, files, scripts - to make the user experience snappy. When done right, browser caching can be a real game changer. When done wrong, it can have users confused and frustrated at content that doesn’t seem to update.
With so many of us working on the cloud, using design software online, collaborating in real-time, browser caching can actually make the web experience slower. The trick is to clear your cache often if you work with SaaS products. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly how much time you’ll save by using browser caching on your website but you could see an improvement by 2 seconds or so. That’s pretty significant if you consider the fact that bounce rates double when loading times go over 5 seconds.
You’ll want to work with your website developers and hosting provider to set up browser caching correctly. This means setting up different caching rules for different file types, using cache-control and expires headers, and using tools such as Redis or Memcached if they are available to you.
Implement Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Most people seem to think that CDNs are just for big sites or streaming Netflix. But these networks - essentially a bunch of servers scattered around the world - exist so your users can possibly access your content from the closest location, no matter where they are. I Imagine that means your site loads lightning fast, whether they're in london or mumbai. It’s a smart move for small businesses too, especially with so many affordable options out there.
And it’s not only about speed - there’s better security, improved scalability and you don’t have to go through the pain of all those requests clogging up your primary server. If there’s a traffic spike because of some wild viral video or some news mention, you’ll thank yourself for putting this in place. There is something worth mentioning here though - you do need a bit of tech-savviness to get a CDN up and running without pulling out all your hair.
It sounds like a lot when you’re first starting, but once you see how much faster your site works and how much safer it is with cyber criminals growing more sophisticated by the day, I doubt you’ll regret the investment. In my experience, getting help from someone who knows what they're doing (like an agency) will save time and money in the long run. More or less. It also means you'll have that extra peace of mind knowing things will go according to plan rather than seeing broken links or missing images on your homepage.
Monitor and Test Performance Regularly
Most people think you can monitor your website once or twice and that’s enough to keep up with performance. The annoying reality is that you need to do this quite regularly, like most things in life. Comes Across As it's definitely more complex than simply scheduling performance testing and signing off on a list of tweaks. See, website performance is like fashion trends.
It keeps evolving and what was performing well one year can tank in another one. This could be because there are now twice as many people accessing the website on their mobile phones, or because key pieces of software went through an update without anyone bothering to check in on compatibility. The question I think you should ask yourself about performance testing - is seemingly it regular enough. Because for most websites, it really isn’t.
More or less. Speed tests and analytical tools can help you keep an eye on key numbers - bounce rate, session duration, loading time, traffic sources - among others. But these tools themselves have different methodologies and might leave you feeling confused about which numbers to really trust. That’s where things get tricky.
It can possibly be helpful to remember that no single tool will give you all the answers you need, especially if your business involves an e-commerce website or online sales of any kind. Monitoring today shouldn’t be something that makes you panic but helps you know when to react - giving you the time to correct issues well before they become mission critical.