Kristen 0:00
You ever wonder why your website isn’t loading as fast as you want it to? Well, today, we are diving in to why your website might be loading slowly and how you can speed it up. Website speed matters a lot. It impacts how long people stay on your website, or whether they stick around or just leave before they even look at it. But it can also impact how your site ranks on Google, and how many sales you’re making. So today, I am talking about seven common culprits behind slow websites and how you can fix them.
Kristen 0:40
Are you a digital product or course creator selling on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I’m Kristin Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, know stress marketing, email, list building, automations, and so much more. Let’s get started y’all.
Kristen 1:15
Let’s start with hosting. You can think of your website hosting as kind of home. It is where your website lives. Sometimes referred to hosting as the storage for your site. So just like sometimes we have to buy a storage unit or rent a storage unit to put some of our extra stuff in, your website has to have a storage unit online, where all of those files are stored to serve them up to your visitors.
Kristen 1:50
And just like you wouldn’t want to rent the cheapest storage unit in the worst part of town because you might have some security issues. Or you might need to rent a bigger storage unit depending on how much stuff you need to store. It really does matter what host you choose to store your website’s files. Low quality hosting, especially really cheap hosting can drag your website speed way down. And you can also run into issues with things like your website having a lot of downtime, so people aren’t able to access it at all. So you want to make sure that you are choosing a good quality hosting provider.
Kristen 2:29
Some of the things you look for are good reviews. Solid uptime guarantees, if they are not guaranteeing 99% or higher uptime, run the other way. And fast server speeds. Keep in mind, when you’re thinking about reviews, and you’re asking around about hosts, most website owners like you only have one website, which means that their experience with hosting companies is limited usually to just a couple of hosts that they have worked with before and their own one website. And a lot of times, what you might hear is that a certain host has been great for one person for as long as they’ve needed it. But someone else says oh, that host was awful. So when you’re looking for reviews and feedback about what hosts to use, I would really recommend that you look for people like myself, people like web designers who maintain lots of sites.
Kristen 3:27
I maintain currently about 120 websites. And that means I am dealing with a lot of different hosts. So I have seen multiple clients on the same hosts. And I really can tell which hosts in general are great quality and which ones have issues. My recommended host, my absolute favorite right now is Big Scoots, and I’ll put a link to them in the show notes. But you can always go to the Resources page on my website to take a look at who I am currently recommending because it does occasionally change over time and there are a couple of options on that page to choose from.
Kristen 4:04
The second thing that might be slowing your site down is actually still related to your hosting. Notice the pattern here hosting is really important. If you are using shared hosting even on a good quality host. Sometimes you might have some issues and you might need to move over to private hosting. Shared hosting is essentially like slitting an apartment with a bunch of roommates who are constantly using the internet. When they’re streaming movies or downloading files, your internet speed is going to slow down because they’re using a lot of it. Shared hosting works the exact same way. If the other websites that are on your same server are busy if they’re getting lots of traffic or they have some of the problems I’m going to talk about in the rest of this episode, your website could slow down because of their issues.
Kristen 4:56
Now for many people just starting out, shared hosting seems like a great idea because it is usually the cheapest option. But as your traffic grows, you can run into lots of issues with this. Sometimes your host will even shut your site down because it’s getting too much traffic. And it’s pulling too many resources from the other accounts on that same shared hosting. And, like I said earlier, your site speed gets affected by the activities of the other sites on that shared server. So if you suspect that might be an issue, then upgrading to dedicated hosting can make a huge difference. And the link that is shared for BigScoots in the show notes is the link to their managed WordPress hosting, which is a dedicated server.
Kristen 5:41
I’ve personally run 10 websites on my dedicated server with them. And I never have any issues, mostly because a lot of those sites are fairly small and they’re kind of only active during certain periods of time, when I’m launching or running live events, things like that. So they’re not always getting tons of traffic. And usually when one of them is getting a ton of traffic, the others are not. So it works out okay for me to share multiple sites there. But those are just my sites. And that way I am in control of how much of my server is being used on the different ones.
Kristen 6:16
So if you feel like you might be running into some issues with shared hosting, definitely upgrading to dedicated hosting is a great option. It’s kind of like kicking those roommates out of that apartment and getting your own house where you don’t have to share everything.
Kristen 6:34
Alright, now let’s talk a little bit about your images. We all love high quality photos, and especially if there’s text on it, those photos need to be crisp and clear. But huge image files can really slow down your website. It’s kind of like running with a backpack. The heavier your backpack is, the slower you’re going to move. A lot of people don’t realize that when you upload a big image, and then you change the size of it down to say 50% of the width, or a certain number of pixels, maybe you switch it from large to medium on your page builder or in your host, the website is still loading the original sized image and then shrinking it down so that when people see it, it looks smaller. So you don’t ever want to upload an image that is bigger than what it is displaying on the screen.
Kristen 7:29
If your image is going to be full width, it should be a pretty big image. But if your image is going to be half the width of the screen, then it can be a lot smaller. An easy way to check your image sizes is to open them up in your media library and then check the file size there. Ideally, keep your images below 100 kilobytes for most things, unless they are full page images or full width images. If you’re uploading PNG images, those files are always going to be much bigger than a JPEG. Sometimes as much as 10 times bigger in terms of file size. So I always recommend JPEG images for photos, and even graphics that have colorful backgrounds. And only use a PNG image if you need a transparent background on that image. This way, your site is loading a lot faster without sacrificing that visual quality. And you’re not uploading an image that is unnecessarily big. You can also use tools like Tiny PNG, Imagify, which is my favorite WordPress plugin for compressing images or Smush is another WordPress option to compress those image sizes. Either of those two plugins will automatically optimize your images as you upload them. And then for existing images, they can also bulk optimize in your media library in just a few clicks. So I would definitely recommend doing that.
Kristen 8:52
But it is important to remember that just because you have a plugin compressing your images, that doesn’t change the actual dimensions of the images. It compresses the file size itself, but not the dimensions. So you also want to avoid uploading great big images like a 4000 by 3000 pixel image, when it’s only going to be displayed at maybe 800 by 600 or 400 by 300 on your website. Resize those images to the smaller dimensions that you’re going to need on the site before you upload them.
Kristen 9:25
Our fourth culprit for slow site speed is that a lot of sites are missing a caching plugin. You might have noticed that sometimes the first time you visit a website, it might take a second to load. But the second time it loads lots faster. That is caching in action. Caching saves a version of your website so that it loads faster the next time for visitors that come to your website.
Kristen 9:52
It’s in some ways like having shortcuts in our web browser to those websites we always go to. You can enable caching with some free plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache, but I actually really recommend using something a little more robust, like WP Rocket that will also do some other things.
Kristen 10:15
WP Rocket will turn on caching, but it also we’ll help to do some things with your code that we’re going to talk about in just a second. When caching gets turned on those static file like images and the code that runs your website gets stored temporarily on your visitors computers. That’s what we’re deleting when we go to our browser history and we click Clear Cache. This means when they come back to your site, it loads a lot faster, because the browser doesn’t need to redownload everything.
Kristen 10:45
Setting up caching plugins is usually really straightforward. If you install one of the ones I just mentioned, you literally just install and activate it, and it’s all done. And if you’re on WordPress, you can also talk to your host about setting up or optimizing your server side caching as well.
Kristen 11:02
Alright, let’s move on to something a little more techy, but I’m going to try to make it really simple. Inefficient code can be a big culprit when it comes to slowing down your site. You can think about your website’s code almost like the engine in a car. If it’s cluttered with a bunch of unnecessary things someone has thrown under the hood, then it won’t run efficiently. Without getting too technical. Some of the best things you can do to clean up your code is to make sure you’re using a lightweight theme. And you’re deleting extra themes that aren’t in use on your site. So you really shouldn’t have tons of themes in your website.
Kristen 11:42
And make sure you’re only keeping plugins installed on your WordPress site that you are actually using. A lot of times we add plugins and then we don’t use them or we find something else. And all of those extra plugins that are installed on our site, but not in use can really slow down the website. You want to make sure those plugins stay updated regularly. Because one of the things plugin developers are always working on is cleaning up their plugins so that they can run smoother and faster. So make sure you are updating those regularly. And that you’re getting rid of any that you don’t really need.
Kristen 12:19
My gut check kind of question for plugins is does this plugin help users on my site? Or is it just something I’m sticking in there for my own convenience? Because if it’s just in there, for my own convenience, I might need to delete it if my site is running a little slow, and I think too many plugins might be part of the problem.
Kristen 12:40
A lot of times, we will also end up having multiple plugins that either do the same thing. Or maybe you’re using a plugin for one thing, and you don’t realize it can also do another. One of my favorite examples of that is Rank Math. Rank Math is an SEO plugin. So if you have it installed, you should not have Yoast or All In One SEO or any other SEO plugins because rankmath is your SEO plugin. But did you know that Rank Math can also handle redirections. So if you are using Prettylinks, or Redirections the plugin or another plug in called 301 redirects, you could actually move all of your redirects into Rank Math redirections, and then delete that other plugin. That’s a good way to help cut down on extra plugins.
Kristen 13:31
Likewise, if you’re using Elementor Pro, and you have a pop up builder, like OptinMonster, or something like that on your site, Elementor Pro can build pop ups. There is a pop up module right under template, and you can build pop ups to your heart’s desire, right there in Elementor and get rid of that extra plugin.
Kristen 13:50
So make sure that you are looking into your plugins to see what all they can do, and using them to their fullest potential so you’re not just adding new plugins on for every little thing.
Kristen 14:00
Another thing that you need to be doing to speed up your site is optimizing your database. Your database is kind of like the filing cabinet for your website. It stores things like post revisions, multiple versions of a post or a page that you’ve revised, deleted posts, all kinds of things like that. Over time it gets cluttered with old files, you don’t need any more and unnecessary data, and this can slow down your site. So I recommend regularly cleaning up your database with plugins like WP Rocket that I mentioned earlier.
Kristen 14:35
WP Rocket also helps to clean up any bloated code that you might have lots of things like that to just streamline and clean up your site. Cleaning your database means that you won’t be able to access those old revisions of your posts anymore because you’re deleting them. But in most cases, you don’t need them very often. Once you have updated your page and everything looks good. You don’t need those anymore. So look for a plugin like WP Rocket or some other options our WP Optimize WP Sweep. Those can help clean up your databases on a routine schedule, so that they stay nice and clean and efficient and you don’t have all that excess data in your website.
Kristen 15:18
One tip, though, you really should be taking daily backups, especially if you’re using something like this, that is going to routinely clean out your database. That way, if something goes wrong, and you find out you need a revision that you had deleted, or a page in the trash that had gotten permanently deleted, if you need those back, you can find that backup and then restore them. Just make sure you have backups before you do that.
Kristen 15:44
Last but not least, if you’ve tried all of these other things, and you’re still struggling with site speed, you might need to use a content delivery network or CDN. A CDN stores copies of your website in different locations around the world. And what happens then is that when a visitor goes to your site, they access the copy that is stored closest to them. It’s kind of like how Dollar General has a goal, if you guys haven’t heard this, of being within I think it’s five miles of anyone anywhere in the country. They want everyone in the United States to be five miles or less from their nearest Dollar General. A CDN kind of serves that same purpose for your website.
Kristen 16:27
When you use a CDN all of your sites content, the images, the text, the file, all of it gets distributed across all of these servers, so that when people are accessing your site from the closest server to them, that can reduce the time it takes for the data to get to their computer. And so that makes your site load faster. Now, I know that probably sounds really technical, but there are services like Cloudflare that make it really user friendly to set up. The only tricky thing is that you do have to change some settings in your domains DNS. That’s the settings that point your domain to different places. So if you’re not really comfortable in doing that, you might need to talk to your host or a web developer or designer to get some help and make sure you don’t break anything else like redirects you have or your email, or anything like that.
Kristen 17:16
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope these tips help you improve your website speed. If you love this episode and have friends with websites, screenshot and share this episode with them or share it on your Instagram stories. This will help get the word out about ways that we can all work on improving our website speed. When you share make sure you tag me @Kristendoyle.co. I’ll talk to you soon.
