Website speed is one of the most important factors to consider if you own a website. If you’re site is slow, then you will lose over half of your potential audience before they’ve even come through the door. In this article, we’ll show you how to maximise the speed on your site using a few simple methods.
Patience is a virtue, but don’t expect it from your visitors. In the virtual world, high-speed matters. If your pages take too long to load, your visitors will lose interest fast! And what’s worse, it’ll be costing you money.
How to Ensure Peak Performance
Don’t put style before substance. This is probably the most common mistake in online marketing campaigns. People often focus too heavily on how their page looks, rather than what it says. That isn’t to say that style isn’t important, it is, but keep it simple. Not only will a simple style communicate your pitch more effectively and professionally, but it will also greatly reduce the time it takes for your page to load.
It’s one thing to have flashy images all over the place, but most people who browse the web are far more switched on than they used to be. If you want customers to really trust your site, then you have to speak to them. To find out more about how to do this, check out our post about The Importance of Copywriting.
You’re going to hear us talk a lot about the importance of copywriting whilst reading this blog. This is because it is the key to turning those all important leads into acquisitions.
Improving Performance Without Compromising Quality
It’s important that your pages are looking and performing their best. That means that you’ll need to make a few changes if your loading times are too long. You can run a quick test to check this using [](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=cs)Google's Lighthouse Audit.
To access Lighthouse, right click on your website and select ‘Inspect’. A window will appear with a tab, either on the bottom or the right-hand side of the page. Select Audit, and you will see the Lighthouse Audit tool.
For more details on how to use Google’s Lighthouse Audit tool effectively, check out our related article** Speed Matters: How to Boost your Site’s Performance**
If, like most users, you find your page isn’t performing well, then here are a few handy tips that should have you running at full speed:
Streamline your style
Okay, I don’t want you to start thinking that you should get rid of all your images and banners and reduce your site to text only. Your pages should still look the bee’s knees and there are a number of ways to ensure you keep them slick if you are savvy about the page mechanics.
Reduce Image Sizes
Reducing the size of your pages doesn’t have to mean getting rid of key elements in design.** One of the simplest ways to make a reduction is to alter your image data sizes. You can do this using handy online tools such as Optimizilla and Squoosh, which will compress your JPEG and PNG images whilst maintaining their quality.
Host your Images on a CDN
If you aren’t doing so already then you should host your images on a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This places your images on worldwide servers and closer to your foreign visitors so that data isn’t having to travel long distances. Sounds simple right? It is! There are a number of CDNs you can use but we recommend Akamai.
Use a VPS
Make sure you are using a fast VPS (Virtual Private Server). This seems obvious, but it’s something almost every affiliate marketer neglects when they start out. This is often a case of ‘you get what you pay for’ and whilst at the beginning you probably aren’t going to want to shell out costly monthly payments, it’ll pay off in the long run. If you go for a cheaper option, when it inevitably crashes, you’ll end up wishing you’d made the step up.
Once you’ve tried these few simple steps you should find that your page is running far more efficiently and that your success rate increases. However, if you find you still aren’t converting those all important leads into profitable acquisitions then check out the articles listed below for more help.
Top Traffic Sources Every Affiliate Should Know About
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