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One of the most common pain points for internet users is slow-loading websites. It’s common knowledge today, and everyone tries to optimize their site, but sometimes, it’s still not fast enough.
SearchEngineLand highlights data that shows that if your site takes longer than 8 seconds to load, you risk losing a potential visitor. They even point out that Google has been recommending load times of 2 seconds since 2010.
Today, mobile devices are used more than desktop computers to access the internet. To be specific, the ratio is 60.02% to 39.98%. Thus, it becomes critical that load speeds for mobile phones are a priority. If that’s been an issue for your website, read on.
#1. Check JavaScript (JS) Usage
To put it simply, JS is one way that websites handle everything from interactions and analytics to animations and tracking. It’s been around for quite a while, but it can be a little heavy on processing requirements. Desktop users won’t notice excessive JS code because modern CPUs can handle it no problem.
However, for mobile phones, particularly older models, it can be a big reason for slow loading. One study had researchers send participants to 56 countries in order to measure global variation in web-browsing experience. They found that on lower-end phones, JS processing caused page load times to range from 3.6 seconds to a whopping 62.6 seconds. There are a few ways to address the issue.
One option would be to hire a web developer to do a code audit and find out where and how JS fluff can be minimized. Unfortunately, that can be expensive, which is why it’s always ideal to ensure your website uses clean code from the beginning. This is why so many businesses are turning to AI-powered website builders, because it keeps things simple.
As Hocoos explains, one simply answers a few questions regarding the kind of website they want, and AI does the rest. These services are often template-based, so if one template is JS and CSS-heavy, you can simply switch to a lighter one with a few clicks.
#2. Play the Game of Diminishing Returns
Once you tackle big issues like image compression and script management, it’s normal to assume that your site is as fast as it can be. However, if you’re getting negative feedback, then you need to pop the hood and go deeper. This is the point where you have to decide whether making changes for slightly faster loading is worth it.
For example, fonts. One study found that WOFF2 was able to decrease load time by almost 50 milliseconds compared to TTF. (161.5ms vs 210ms). WOFF2 also uses 4.3 million fewer processor cycles, making it far more efficient.
So this is the second way to handle load times. You shave 50 ms here, another 100 ms somewhere else, and hopefully, that could add up to .5 seconds or more if lucky. It seems insignificant, but you have to get rid of the mindset that it doesn’t matter. If the ideal load time is 2-3 seconds, then yes, a page that loads 200 ms faster is worth the optimization effort.
#3. Offer Lite-loading Alternatives
Sometimes, the bottleneck is simply in the visitor’s phone. They may be on particularly old devices where no amount of optimization will help. Rather than redesign everything from scratch, it can help to create alternative pages for those with weak devices.
Typically, this is done by stripping the page of all images, animations, or other graphic-heavy elements. The user is essentially getting a text-only version of the website so that they can at least access the information they came for. If you can combine this with a strategy like ‘lazy loading,’ you’ve essentially solved slow loading for almost any mobile user.
You may have experienced this before while browsing the internet. The website starts to load normally, like usual. However, if the page doesn’t load after a few moments, you might see a pop-up encouraging you to visit the lite version. When you click it, the page loads in seconds.
This approach has also been used by app developers, and even today, you have lite versions of popular apps like Facebook and Instagram.
All things considered, slow-loading websites are becoming a thing of the past thanks to internet speeds, which have been steadily increasing globally. That said, developers who get lax with optimization or believe that all their visitors are on 100+ Mbps connections should be more realistic.
People from all over the world access the internet, many from rural areas or countries with slower internet speeds. If you want these visitors to stay on your website, you have to cater to their needs as well.
