If you’ve ever observed a\u00a0busy freeway system from the window of a high-rise or an airplane, you’ve probably noticed a certain chaotic order to it all.<\/p>\n
But what happens when the chaos outweighs the order? Problems.<\/p>\n
The internet is rather like that busy freeway system but at high speed. With hundreds of requests zipping around the world, back and forth, to bring you images and text in a matter of seconds, chaos is bound to intervene.<\/p>\n
With that chaos comes downtime, leaving web pages slow to load. A slow site is an abandoned site.<\/p>\n
That’s a real problem and it’s to your benefit to get reliable website monitoring<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the meanwhile, there are many reasons<\/a> that you may find your web pages slow to load so we’ll take a look at five of those reasons.<\/p>\n When someone clicks on your website, it’s like they’re trying to turn on a light.<\/p>\n There’s an expectation that the light will come on immediately after the switch is flipped.<\/p>\n But if your server\u2019s performance is poor, that “light” might take a while. It doesn’t even matter how quick and optimized everything else is. A\u00a0slow server’s going to give you a slow start.<\/p>\n What’s happening with the flip of that switch is that your browser (Firefox, Safari, etc.) pings\u00a0your server, asking for all the information and data so it can load up your website.<\/p>\n But if your server is feeling sluggish and not performing well, it’s going to take its time to respond.<\/p>\n Poor server performance can be most commonly traced\u00a0down to your web host.<\/p>\n The cheaper web hosts usually give you a shared server. What that means is you\u2019re sharing space and resources with any number of\u00a0other websites.<\/p>\n Essentially, your site is standing in line with a slew of other sites, waiting its turn. So no wonder your web pages are slow to load.<\/p>\n Add to that the factor of your\u00a0server location and things can get really dicey.<\/p>\n For instance, if someone on the other side of the world clicks on your website, they’re sending a message to the server asking it to load.<\/p>\n The information now has to travel all the way across the world to request access to your\u00a0server. Then it has to travel all the way back to the other side of the world to show up on the screen.<\/p>\n We like to think that this all happens in “the cloud,” but the reality is that the data has to travel through cables and is then transmitted over satellites.<\/p>\n If the server is performing well, the extra distance won’t be nearly the challenge as it would be if it’s sluggish.<\/p>\n Back in the day of dial-up, a large image took forever to load.<\/p>\n Forever being several minutes.<\/p>\n With the advent\u00a0of broadband, the definition of ‘forever’ changed considerably. Now it’s more like 5 seconds.<\/p>\n Still, that’s long enough for someone to bounce.<\/p>\n At any rate,\u00a0if your site is chock full of huge images, they could be making your web pages slow to load.<\/p>\n Think of it this way.<\/p>\n If you order a burger and fries at a restaurant<\/a>, the request goes to the kitchen, the two items are made and the server brings it to you. But add on a bunch of sides and special requests and it’s going to take longer to get your order. Plus, the server is going to have to carry a heavier load.<\/p>\n Same thing with your web server.<\/p>\n It has to carry every part of your website – content, text, and images – to your browser screen. Large\u00a0images are the equivalent of that heavy tray of food. And if you have a lot of them, that’s a lot of heavy trays.<\/p>\n A large image is challenging, but the file format does make a difference. Stick with\u00a0JPG, PNG, and GIF images because they load much more quickly.<\/p>\n Avoid the heavy formats like TIFF and BMP\u00a0because, well, they’re heavy. And in this case, heavy means SLOW.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re experiencing a lot of traffic, congratulations on your success!<\/p>\n But here’s the downside: it will eventually cause your website to slow down.<\/p>\n Your web server can only do so much. It’s the human equivalent of saying, “I’ve only got two hands!” And the more that is asked of it, the slower it’s going to be.<\/p>\n So then the harried web server has to call in extra help from the back. Soon enough, things are slowing down on the back end too.<\/p>\n Ah, success.<\/p>\n1. Server performance and location<\/h3>\n
2. Extra large images<\/h3>\n
3. Lots of traffic<\/h3>\n
4.\u00a0Network problems<\/h3>\n