Tag Archives | website

5 Tips to Help Your Website to Load Faster

In building our website, oftentimes, we’d like to put as much content in it to make it informative. It is for promotion. It’s also to get people engaged in what your business is all about. The more detailed the better. One striking factor of a good website is having a good design together with a user-friendly interface.

Website load speed

As part of increasing the rank and improving the visibility of a website, webmasters do SEO (search engine optimization) to bypass unnecessary codes as this would help improve the website’s performance. However, one of the mistakes not often observed by webmasters is that there are still times that websites aren’t fully optimized in terms of how it loads a page and that is why, as a result, the pages tend to load very slow.

Here in this article, you’ll learn about tips on how to make your website load faster and smoother.

5 Tips to Help your website load Faster

  • Optimize the graphics

Graphics are one of the main factors that make a website attractive. True enough. Though it will be quite a challenge to webmasters on how they would be able to display high resolution images yet still make the website load fairly fast. Size matters as they say, and this is why the manner of displaying graphics in websites should always be taken into consideration.

A key to effectively manage your web graphics is to set default height and width attributes so that they will be of a uniform size.

  • Cache out

Every time you load a web page, your web browser temporarily stores its information to a place called cache. The cache will be helpful in making web pages load faster in the future. One way to utilize the cache is to design your web page in such a way that the logo or any common information that you’d want to be displayed is always visible. Create an external script that will be called by different web pages in your website. Doing this, the next time that you would load another page of the same website, it won’t take that long anymore as it will use the existing information of that web page in the cache and just proceed on loading the other information of that web page.

  • Omit pop-up pages

Web pages with pop-ups tend to make the entire website load slow. Some users find it annoying when suddenly new window opens especially when it is an ad. There are some websites that will bombard you with so many pop-up windows which you don’t really need to view. You’ll just end up closing them one by one. Good thing there are pop-up blockers in most web browsers and you can just unblock those pop-up windows that need to be opened, an example is a login page.

Most users or viewers would prefer the links they click to open in a new tab (since most of the web browsers of present already have a multitasking feature that enables users to open multiple tabs and load them simultaneously.Worst is when the pop-up window links you to a web page with malicious content and even your files get harmed. It’s going to be very hassle and so it is not recommended to use pop-ups because it also causes

  • Tweak the code

Slow Service Set a standard way of coding. It’s like helping web pages to understand one another through a common language thus this will definitely result to a faster loading web page. It’s best to build a good coding foundation for your website so it won’t be hard to track its different functionality of the need for change/update arises.

If in case you’re maintaining a website that you didn’t built nor weren’t even involved during its planning stage and then you start noticing that it’s starting to get annoying because of the way it loads, you may consider checking on the source codes and do some performance tuning then just expect the improvement afterwards. It is important to know that codes can be compressed in such a way it is optimized for web browsers to interpret them for us humans. Some codes that can be compressed are PHP, CSS and JavaScript.

  • Eliminate blank spaces

It really gets boring to view a website with only little information. To get rid of boredom while viewing, simply don’t leave web pages with large amount of blank spaces as having such contributes to a slower loading web page. Compress contents in a web page if needed so you do not need to come up with a new one but make sure you don’t overload information in it. Doing such will remove some extra bytes the browser need to interpret and load. Remember, the lesser the bytes, the faster it will take for the web page to load.

The performance of your website mostly relies on the way it’s being coded. The site map should remain organized, following the detailed structure of the website. Maintain your website with proper SEO then you’re good to go. You’ll always most likely to make it right along the way if you’ve started something correctly.

About the Author

Jessica Francisco is a cheerful 25-year-old with an odd sense of fun. The least of her broad range of hobbies include swimming, hiking and listening to the music of Michael Jackson. Jessica is also one of the editors of Luke Roxas a renowned Business Tycoon from the Philippines. He is on Google +.

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The New SEO for Small Business Owners – QA with Chris Bennett

Every week as SmallBizLady, I conduct interviews with experts on my Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. The show takes place every Wednesday on Twitter from 8-9pm ET. This is excerpted from my recent interview with Chris Bennett @chrisebennett, the CEO of Central.ly. Chris and his Co-Founders created website builder http://www.Central.ly so small business owners all over the world can build their own websites that integrate with the social and business tools they are using.  Chris is a Wharton graduate, a decendant from a small business owning family and is passionate about helping small business owners manage their presence online to improve business.

 

SmallBizLady: What is the biggest problem small business owners face when it comes to websites?

Chris Bennett: Small business owners typically are passionate about their business and love running them. With that said, they do not have strong design or technical backgrounds so creating websites is tricky for them .

You can sum their problems up with four things.  Small business websites do not have the correct information for the consumer, they do not leverage social integration, they are not mobile ready, and their sites are not visually unappealing. If you are looking for a small business and you are out and about on your smart phone, if you cannot access the company’s website than you are less likely to do business with them. If you can’t find their address, you are less likely to visit. If their website is poorly designed then you are less likely to patronize because their message is that they do not care about their image, so they likely do not care about their product or service.

Also the lack of education, people do bad things because they don’t know any better.
SmallBizLady: What should a small business owner have on their website?

Chris Bennett: You need to clearly state what your business does: What service or product do you provide. If you provide a service, share your portfolio, if you provide a product, give screenshots and descriptions of the product. If you are local business, it’s imperative that you have your address and your phone number readily available. For a restaurant, a menu with store hours is very important.

Looking professional is important so you definitely want to start by having a custom domain name. The same goes for email. It looks unprofessional when your business email is name@gmail.com, what you want is name@yourbusiness.com. Continue Reading →

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Website Design Basics for Start-up Businesses

Every week as SmallBizLady, I conduct interviews with experts on my Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. The show takes place every Wed on Twitter from 8-9pm ET. This is excerpted from my recent interview with Yiana Palacios @designleap on Twitter.  She is Founder and CEO of Design Leap. She specializes in graphic design and website design. Her unique approach is to work closely with startup and small business owners one-on-one, designing marketing materials that help you grow your business. Design Leap is located in Burbank, CA, serving businesses nationally. For more information http://www.designleap.net

Smallbizlady:  What are some excuses that start-up businesses make about not having a website?

Yiana PalaciosThe biggest one is the money issue. I also hear people say “my business is not big enough to have a website” or not having time or knowledge about web design in general. These days, if someone asks for your website address and you don’t have one to give them, your business will not be considered seriously. A simple starter website doesn’t cost a fortune, but not having one at all will send your potential clients to your competition.

Smallbizlady:  Do you recommend purchasing a .net, a .org or any other domain name extension in addition to a .com?

Yiana PalaciosPersonally, I would purchase a .net or a .org in addition to .com, but not both. Because these two in my opinion are the top two remembered extensions after the .com. There are millions of sites on the Internet and it’s not likely that your competitor will choose the exact same name to win over your business, so buying too many extensions is not necessary.

Smallbizlady:  What do you need to consider when hiring a web designer?

Yiana PalaciosHave an architecture for your website with how many pages the site will have. Have your budget in mind before you start talking with potential vendors.  Be sure to check out the actual websites the vendor has done (and not just their online portfolio). Call at least three references. Use a contract with progression payments for work completed. 

Smallbizlady:  What are the alternatives to hiring a website designer?

Yiana PalaciosWhen your business is starting you can settle for a do-it-yourself website solution. There are many companies that offer this alternative. It will take more time and effort on your part as you would be doing everything yourself, but at this stage in your business, you just want to have some sort of a website.

Smallbizlady:  How should you start in a web design process?

Yiana Palacios:  You need to know who your target market is, who your competitors are and check out their websites, and know what you want your website to do for your business. At Design Leap, we want to get to know the client and their business as much as possible. It’s not just about having a good-looking site, it’s creating a site that is user friendly, easy to navigate and that delivers on what you want to accomplish.

Smallbizlady:  What are the common mistakes that you see people make on their websites?

Yiana Palacios:  Well, there’s actually a long list, but having lots of text in different fonts with different colors and things jumping and flashing all on one page spells disaster. It’s best to keep your website as clean and clutter free as possible and have an easy and consistent navigation throughout.

Smallbizlady:  Should a website have a Splash page (also know as a Flash page)?

Yiana PalaciosShort answer is no. A Splash page can be pretty, but it takes time to load, search engines can’t rank it and it turns away visitors because they don’t have time to wait for it to load. Basically, a Splash page hurts your website more than helping it.

Smallbizlady:  What do you say about using your own photos vs. stock photography on your website?

Yiana PalaciosStock photography is a great, cheaper alternative to using custom photos on a website. If you’re handy with a digital camera and your photos look presentable, absolutely use them. However, if you’re selling products, it’s best to hire a professional to take the photos to present them in a best possible way. Images help you tell a story so only use those that are relevant to your topic. Here’s an article on “Adding Images to Your Website” that has good tips and links to where you can find free stockphotos. http://www.designleap.net/blog/2009/03/adding-images-to-your-website.html

Smallbizlady:  At what point of the website design process should one start working on SEO?

Yiana Palacios:  SEO is really a topic in its self, but do your keyword research, write different titles and descriptions for each individual page that will be on your site in the beginning of the website design process. Doing this at the beginning will save you and your website designer a lot of time by not having to go through all the pages again to insert this information. 

Smallbizlady:  How does one get on the first page of Google?

Yiana PalaciosYeah, the one question that everybody asks and the only one that can’t really be answered. Google has a secret formula and it’s always changing, so there’s no one sure way of getting there. Start by having your website search engine optimized and most importantly start building relevant links to your website. The more links incoming to your website from other relevant and in “good standing” sites, the better ranking it will receive.

 If you found this interview helpful, join us on Wednesdays 8-9pm ET follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter. 

How to participate in #SmallBizChat: http://bit.ly/S797e

For more tips on starting or growing your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog at http://bit.ly/3x5Gm2 www.succeedasyourownboss.com

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