Nothing infuriates a user more than a slow website, and in a time where convenience is prioritised, the delays of a lagging website can cause frustration and lead to users prematurely leaving sites. It is no secret that the faster a website loads, the better the user experience. User experience is crucial as it determines the users perception of the business and whether they would recommend you to others. It will also hugely impact the likelihood of a user converting as for every second the site loads faster, the conversion rate improves by 17% (according to a study done by Bidnamic). This blog shares some tips and tricks on how to find out the cause of your poor pagespeed.
Do Small Improvements Matter?
Google pagespeed insights help to break down what aspects of the website are not performing as well as expected, therefore identifying which areas of the site need improving. They provide score based results that can help you to see how far you have improved results when changes are made. The issues that are causing a slow website can be difficult to fix from a technicality point of view, so it may require a web developer to help implement the fixes.
It can be almost unattainable to achieve a 100% green result, but don’t feel disheartened, scores within the 60-80% range are still a positive result and can mean that your site performance is pretty good! Anything you can do helps, no matter how small the change is, as they will add up over time. If it’s a WordPress site, then you can implement some quick wins, such as a plugin to help with caching, a plugin to help with image optimisation etc. You can read more about our favourite WordPress plugins, caching plugins and image optimisation on our existing blog. If you need guidance from a web developer, then get in touch and our web team can offer support.
Google PageSpeed Insights: Explaining the Interface
The Google Pagespeed Insights tool has a simple interface and is relatively self-explanatory to use, it even has its own online guide. It offers you two options, one is mobile and the other is desktop. These show how different aspects can be more important depending on the device and helps you to identify where you need to focus. Due to the popularity of using mobile phones, the default mode is usually pre-set to mobile. Insights scores you based on 4 sets of criteria: performance, accessibility, SEO and best practices.
- Accessibility – check how accessible your website is for users by detecting a subset of issues.
- SEO – checks that your page is following the basic Search Engine Optimisation guidelines and advice.
- Performance – Lighthouse scoring determines your performance level by looking at your metrics.
- Best Practices – Overall score based on whether you are following Google’s best practices.
How Well is Your Site Built?
How well your site was built will impact how quickly and smoothly it runs for users, determining their entire experience. Document Object Model (DOM) is a programming API for HTML and XML documents. API is referring to the Application Programming Interface, which is a set of protocols and definitions, used to integrate and build application software. The DOM defines the logical structure of documents and the way a document is accessed and manipulated; therefore DOM size is an important factor when determining the speed of a page and a website’s performance. The DOM size is a common issue, it relates to how many code elements are being rendered, the fewer the elements, the better the page’s performance.
Page builders are a tool that allows users to design and structure responsive pages for websites with little to no coding required, they are plugins or theme components that are built into WordPress. Additionally, they can be extensions for other programs, such as Adobe Magento. However, these “drag and drop” page builders often contain a lot of elements, consequently having a negative impact on your page’s speed. At Ascendancy, we prefer to not use page builders to ensure our code is tidy and not being created by using bloated page builders. If your DOM size is too large, it can cause your website to be slow or crash, thus leading to high bounce rates, low engagement and poorer search engine rankings.
Expand Your Digital Toolbox
As with most aspects of the digital world, it is a dynamic space that is constantly changing. Therefore, the rules around page speed may evolve, leading to results one month being worse compared to another, as it fluctuates with the ever-changing boundaries. It must also be considered that Google PageSpeed can appear biased sometimes, so it is worth running the site through multiple page speed tools. There are many other tools available such as GTMetrix, that offer similar insights but not through the lens of Google. To gain an accurate reflection of your page speed and the problems that are slowing it down, use several tools alongside Google’s.
If In Doubt: Reach Out!
To summarise, it is important to pay attention to the page speed of your sites, as they impact user experience thus influencing conversion potential. Make sure to use multiple tools to gain an accurate and well-rounded perception of how your page speed is scoring. You can use these insights to help you to make the necessary changes to improve your page’s speed. It is also important to consider the DOM size of your site and how this is impacting your page speed, it may be your site needs structural changes or a full overhaul. Improving the speed of your site can be a complex process, so get in touch with any further questions you may have!
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