Online shoppers want a fast response when searching for and buying products online. Recent research shows 90% of online shoppers leave an e-commerce site if the pages take a long time to load. Plus, a quarter of them never visit that retailer again. If your company website is slow to load, you are hurting your business.

How Does a Slow Website Affect my Business?

A slower speed on your website affects your company in several ways.

  • Less traffic to your site
  • Lower revenue due to loss of sales
  • Decrease in customer conversion rates
  • Increase in your website’s bounce rate
  • Drop in your SEO ranking
  • Poor user experience for your customers

What Is an Ideal Load Time?

Online shoppers expect retail websites to load in two to four seconds. So every second beyond that timeframe costs you sales.

How Do I Fix a Slow Website?

To resolve the issue, you first need to determine what is causing the problem. Here are the most common culprits of slow sites and how to fix them.

  1. Slow Server

Like all technology, servers evolve to increase efficiency. If you have been using the same server for many years, it is worth looking into upgrading to a newer service.

  1. Inefficient Hosting Provider

If you maintain your site through a hosting service provider, their service could be the problem. Changing providers to one that offers performance optimization services will make sure your website loads as it should.

  1. Large Images

Those beautiful high-resolution images on your pages require a lot of bandwidth to load. Reduce the file size of any images that are larger than 1MB.

  1. Unclean Code

Ask your web developer to check the coding of the site and remove any unnecessary elements.

  1. Outdated Flash Content

Flash used to be the popular tool to add interactivity to your website, but it is bulky and takes a long time to load. Have any Flash files replaced with the newer HTML5 coding instead.

  1. Undetected Malware

Hackers could have infected your pages with malware working in the background undetected. Have your website checked regularly for malicious code and invest in a security plug-in, if you don’t already have one.

A slow website hurts your retail business in more ways than just lost revenue. Taking the necessary steps to identify and fix the issue will impact your bottom line with increased sales and happy customers.

 

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