What to Do About a Page That Loads Too Slowly

Are you worried because Google Pagespeed Insights says your site loads too slowly? We all know how important load speed is; after three minutes, 25 percent of your visitors will leave rather than wait for the page to fully load. Since 2010, Google has included page speed as a ranking factor. Slow load websites offer a poor user experience.

Pagespeed Insights offers helpful suggestions if it determines your page is loading slowly. The tool may suggest optimizing your images or JavaScript compression to decrease your site's download size. The problem is you don't get a complete picture. You should make your site load fast by optimizing things you control, but many factors which affect page speed are out of your control. Someone may believe your site loads slowly because they have background apps running or multiple browser plugins so their computer's performance suffers.

If you care about the user experience, consider what your website looks like while it loads instead how quickly it actually loads. It's visitor's perception which matters. Technical adjustments are necessary, but perceived performance can make your website feel like it loads faster. Imagine a boring train ride without WiFi. An hour journey will seem like an hour. With WiFi, you could check Facebook and Watch YouTube videos and the time will fly by. The train seems faster even though the journey took the same amount of time.

To optimize your site's perceived load time, use a status bar. Visitors will take a second to two to watch it and feel reassured that the site is loading. The one or two seconds they look at the status bar comes off the remembered wait time for your visitors.

Ensure the content above the fold loads first. Visitors will interact with this content first and not realize your site is still loading. You can't measure perceived load time with any tools available but you can ask your friends to access your site on their device and tell you whether they feel it loads quickly or slowly. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/f0qy23/howdoyouactuallytestpagespeed_consistently/.