Why Speed is Important for Your Propane Website

People have a short attention span when visiting sites online. They expect fast results which means you need to provide them with a website that loads quickly.

You have about 5 seconds to make a good first impression on your website. A site bogged down with problems and slow response time is a missed business opportunity.

Remember, your website is the cornerstone of your marketing strategy and in today’s high-speed digital world, it better be fast!

Slow Websites are Conversion Killers

Speed matters. For one thing, it’s the very first thing people will notice about your website. You could have the most beautiful site on the internet but it wouldn’t matter if it’s giving users dial-up Deja vu. 

The average website visitor will abandon your site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. This means you are potentially losing sales over something that can be avoided.

Positive user experience means giving them what they are looking for and giving it to them quickly. 

Now that we’ve established that speed matters, what can you do to ensure your site is quick and efficient?

Avoid Crowded Hosting Servers

For starters, avoid shared hosting that crams multiple into a server. It will just slow everything down. There are many web hosts that are optimized for speed, particularly for WordPress websites.

Optimize Photos and Videos

Content management systems such as WordPress make it easy to upload videos and pictures to your website. The problem is that often, this media is far bigger than is necessary.

Large images take longer to download. People in office environments notice even minor slowdowns so you know that people on mobile have it even worse. There are several simple steps you can take to avoid this:

• Opt for the ideal format for all media types
  • .JPG, GIF or PNG work best for images
  • .MP4 works best for videos
• Compress video and image files whenever possible. There are plenty of good plugins for that.
• Keep videos short
• Try uploading videos to YouTube or Vimeo instead of serving them locally

Leverage Browser Caching

Caching will improve speed and browsing on your website so you’ll want to make sure it’s enabled. 

Things like logos and contact information are likely to appear on every page of your website in the same place and without caching, visitors will have to download this information on every new page.

Don’t Know Where to Begin? Hire a Marketing Agency to Help!

If you want to make a great first impression with your website and learn more about increasing your page’s speed, you may be ready to hire a marketing agency. After all, it’s a daunting task that requires time, effort, and expertise. 

A marketing agency will work with you to make sure your website is fresh, modern, and user friendly!

By the way, you can make sure your homepage survives the snap judgment of users with these 5 best practice tips!