A slow Website can really harm your business. According to surveys performed by Gomez.com, almost 50% of visitors expect a Website to load in under 2 seconds and abandon the Website in under 3 seconds. Google also uses Website speed as one of several 100 ranking factors. Now can you see why it is so important to have a fast loading Website?

So what causes slowness and how can it be fixed?

Many different factors can cause slowness. Some of which may be actually caused by your Web server. Here’s a few to get you started: –

• Shared hosting – If your Website is sharing its space with 100’s of other Web sites you are throwing money into the fire. Each Website is fighting for resources on a single server, and it only takes one poorly behaved or badly coded Website to bring down the rest. Your £3 p/m shared hosting plan might sound great for your wallet, but in reality, you are likely to lose much more money in the long run. Infusion IT recommend a VPS for business-critical Web sites and Web applications.
• Incorrectly configured Web server – A web server needs to be highly optimised depending on the type of Website / Web Application it is currently running. Installing a basic Web Server or using a generic Web server used by many Shared Hosting providers without any optimisations is a wasted opportunity. Infusion IT perform an audit on your Web server to ensure that it is configured for speed and security.
• Poorly coded Website – According to WordPress.com, 76.5 million websites are currently running the WordPress CMS. WordPress is a fantastic platform and we at Infusion IT use it on our site and that of some of our customers but it MUST be optimised and built correctly. The cause of most WordPress slowness is due to poorly coded themes or plugins. Outside of the WordPress platform, poorly coded database queries and a poor coding practice can also cause significant slowness.
• A web server in the wrong GEO location – If the majority of your customer base is located in the UK, you need a Web server also located in the UK – not the USA or Austraila. Having your Web server in the wrong country can be a significant cause of slowness, and it’s one of the first things we at Infusion IT look at when performing an audit.

Does your Website suffer from any of the above? Call our team at Infusion IT, and we can see how we can help.