Amazon did some tests a while back and found that removing seconds from the load time of a web page resulted in more sales.
If your site is slow to load, a lot of visitors simply will not bother to wait. That means all your efforts of writing great blog posts, offering a free download and showcasing everything you have to offer are wasted.
You may not notice how slow your website loads because your computer caches images from previous visits, but a first time visitor will have to wait the full loading time.
Check out your website speed with a free tool from Google. PageSpeed Insights.
Start by checking your home page and other landing pages on your website.
Images take up the most bandwidth on your site but are the easiest to fix in increasing your site’s load time. Are you guilty of any of these three problems?
1. Too many images per page. Keep the number of images on your site to a low number — 2 or 3 are enough. A single large image will have more impact than 2 or 3 small ones. Every additional image you add to a page (this works for online and offline display) lowers the rate of its effectiveness.
2. Images have too high resolution. Make sure every image is correctly sized and optimized for the web. If you take a large image (1200 pixels by 900 pixels) and add it to your website and then change the height and width of the image to 300 pixels by 100 pixels, the image will load with the full 1200 x 900 pixel amount even if it only displays as a small picture. Unless you have a program that lowers the resolution to a lower amount, it doesn’t matter how small the picture looks because it will load the full file.
3. Too many plugins. If you are using a CMS (Content Management System) to build your website, such as WordPress, there will be lots of code that may slow down the loading speed of your page. Every plugin you add to your site slows the loading of the page down. If you have plugins that are not being used, deactivate them and delete them. A plugin that is not being used can still slow the site down.
To learn about real book marketing strategies and to get a jump start on your marketing, check out the Authors Academy.
