Website Speed
Like a lot of small business or sole traders, Iike me run and maintain my own website. I have notes that the website speed seams slow on loading up! I know this could be down to how I build my website in WordPress or could be my hosting not right?
This was backed up when I was doing some research on how to sell art and come across a website called The Art Business. A website with lots of good information on how to run your art business and come across an article, on how Google uses the website speed for there ranking now!
So I looked into what my website speed was on Google and it was very good! Some of the information is a bit technical too! The joy of doing the website yourself! As you see below the page load time was 8.1 seconds, this does sound much but it too long for any visitors to my website
So I looked into it
So I looked into it and came up with a plan to try to solve this! One of the biggest things that could slow down my website is my images! I looked out some of the images on my website and tried resaving them in Photoshop for the web!
To be honest I did find any different at the size I have them at 1200 on the longes side! The only time there was when I reduced the compression I applied to them but that named the images not look so good!
The new plan was to reduce the size of the image down from 1200 to 900 along the longes side! So I upload the new size images and retested the site! Still not much change?
Then I note in the report on the images so I looked at that and found out it was down to totally different images that causing the problem as was over 1200 pixels! It was a photo on the website navigation sidebar!
So I resized this image to 100 pixels on the longes side and taken the old one-off! I run the test again without this image and found the website was a lot faster!
So uploaded the newly resized image and run the test again and found it when back up again! Him so back to taking it off again!
I am happy with it
I am happy with it as it is now! So if your running and updating your website keep an eye on your image sizes and how your website designed and how the load page speed is?
I have also migrated my website over to a new hosting platform that is faster! I also get with this hosting company an SSL certificate for my website!
Having the SSL on my website is great as this adds a new layer of protection for my visitors to my website. Then I going to add A new shop on my website too! This will make it so easy for clients to bye artworks from me.
There will be one other new page I will be adding is a CV of my art career progresses. So that will keep me busy for some time!