A website is generally only as fast as its slowest component.
We’re often approached by clients looking to make their websites faster. Many believe that there must be one surefire solution to achieving this, but the reality is that making a website truly fly is sometimes a complex undertaking that requires extensive expertise.
There are several considerations to make, and it is important to address all of them if you want to ensure ultra-fast load times. Some of the major factors to address include:
- Hosting service: You can have the leanest and fastest website possible, but if your website hosting server is poorly configured, outdated or overcrowded, then no amount of on-site optimisations will make a significant difference. For this reason, we strongly encourage customers to host their Silvercode-built websites on a Silvercode hosting plan. Likewise, you may have the fastest hosting, but if your website is very poorly optimised, your hosting service can only take you so far towards your performance goals.
- Number of widgets and functionality: The more elements a website page has, the slower the load time will be. For example, a website with only text and images will always load faster than a website with text, images, videos, contact forms and sliders. The same goes for any other specific functionality - the more your website can do, the more code and scripts need to be loaded on each page load, and thus the load time will be higher. It's important to find a balance between functionality and performance that best works for you.
- Images and videos: The more images or videos per page, the longer it will take to load. This is particularly relevant for larger images/longer videos.
- Third party scripts & analytics: Many analytics tracking services (such as Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel) insert a script into every page of your website. While such tracking scripts are common and usually required for business websites, it's important to note that they do have an impact on the load times of your website.
- Social media feeds and embedded videos: Does your home page really need a feed of your latest Instagram and Facebook posts? If not, removing these feeds can have a great impact on reducing your page load times. We would recommend keeping social media feeds and embedded videos to the necessary minimum, and ideally, place them on non-critical pages where load time doesn't have as much of an impact.
Although the above list is not inclusive of every aspect that may impact a website’s loading speed, these are some of the primary considerations.
Silvercode uses stringent best practices when building your website to achieve an optimal loading speed, though we cannot guarantee any specific load time until we know exactly what will be on each page. Your functionality requirements, chosen hosting service, and a number of other factors will determine the final result. We can provide advice on determining the best balance in terms of functionality vs loading speed, and will work with you on the best course of action for your needs.
If your website was not built by Silvercode, you may request a website speed optimisation through our WordPress Website Performance Optimisation service.
