Why Website Speed Is So Important When Choosing A Web Host
When selecting a host for your website, it’s vitally important that you consider website speed. Website pages that load quickly are likely to get more traffic and more conversions as well as better rankings in the search engines.
Author: Jeremy Owen
Web Designer, Developer & SEO Specialist
Last Updated: February 16th, 2023
What Is Website Load Speed?
In layman’s terms, website load speed is how long it takes for a website to appear on your screen and in the browser that you’re using. The faster the page loads, the better it is in regards to retaining visitors and getting conversions.
It’s also important to understand how Google views websites by understanding their PageSpeed insights as this will help to improve both user experience and the ranking of your site. These insights focus on real-user experience and Core Web Vitals. Google’s Core Web Vitals are a set of performance signals that are evaluated for all websites and includes metrics such as:
- Time To First Byte (TTFB)
- First Contentful Paint (FCP)
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
In general, the time that it takes for any website to load fully is dependent on the complexity of the page and includes various components such as the CSS style, HTML code, JavaScript files, and other elements such as photos, images, and videos.
To assist with ensuring photos and images load quickly, it’s also important for website developers to ensure that images are resized and compressed as well as served in Nextgen formats. If you use WordPress, there are plenty of plugins that you can utilise to help with this.
Why Is It Important For Websites To Load Faster
Firstly, websites that load quickly are regarded as being professional and quality sites in the eyes of the web users who view them.
More importantly, though, website visitors demand fast-loading sites as they search for information and products online. Most people simply don’t have the patience to wait for a website that is taking ages to load.
This means that a slower-loading site will incur a higher bounce rate as users abandon a site that is taking too long to load. Obviously, this results in lower conversions and doesn’t benefit your site when it comes to search engine rankings.
How Hosting Affects Your Website Speed
All the files that make up the content of your website are stored on servers that your web host controls. How quickly your site loads when being accessed by a user will often depend on the hard drive of the server as well as the RAM and bandwidth.
Additionally, it’s also important to take into account website caching and for more dynamic websites, the use of a CDN like Cloudflare is recommended. WordPress users have the ability to install certain plugins that help with more robust caching.
Many savvy web developers are choosing web hosting services that offer servers with SSDs (Solid State Drives) rather than HDDs (Hard Disk Drives). This is because SSDs store data on interconnected flash-memory chips rather than on the drive itself.
For many basic websites that are not too heavy with multimedia content, shared hosting should have enough RAM and bandwidth to ensure that the site loads fast enough.
However, for more dynamic websites that have a lot of visual and moving content, it’s usually recommended that you use a hosting plan that has a better speed out of the box and higher resource limits.
IN SUMMARY
When choosing a reliable and quality web host, you really need to consider the website speed that you can expect. This will ensure that users who visit your site do not leave before the page has finished loading.
Ultimately, this will result in a lower bounce rate, more conversions, and a better ranking in the search engines.
Check out our review of the best Web Hosting companies in Australia if you’re interested in finding out who we recommend.
