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Page Loading Speeds

by ExcelExpert
18 replies
  • SEO
    • |
How important is page loading times across different browsers.

My site loads almost instantly on Explorer and Edge but there is 2-4 second delay when loading my home page of Chrome. It only affects my home page and every other page appears ok. I cant work out what the delay is caused by so I might have to live with it. (It is a WP site)

Thanks
#loading #page #speeds
  • Profile picture of the author onehalf
    Site visitors have a very short attention span and a slow loading page often discourage them to continue browsing your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author webby0031
    hi mate, pretty simple this one

    Website speed test
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  • Profile picture of the author ExcelExpert
    @onehalf - we are not talking big differences here. Most of may pages load in 2-3 seconds and I could probably speed that up with some effort. My front page takes 4+ seconds - in the first 2-3 seconds nothing seems to happen and then it loads all at once. But that only happens on Chrome - Edge and Explorer seems to shave over second off all those times.

    @Webby - thanks for the link. Using that to test the pages my front page is constantly around the 4 second mark in Chrome and 3 seconds in Edge and Explorer. Not sure how that sites work - does it time the loading of the page to their server in which case my browser should not make a difference, or does it use the local browser to time the loading?

    BTW - Are these speeds good enough for SEO purposes or am I worrying too much?
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    • Profile picture of the author webby0031
      You need to clear your cache if you keep testing it, it just loads from cache so its not a real result.

      Look at the information it clearly shows whats taking time to load in the waterfall below. You need to get at least under 1.5 seconds for the page to load

      All the information you need is there, you dont need to ask me more questions you need to look at the info. IF its wordpress make sure you have a caching plugin installed.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Come on people. Site speed many times has little to do
        with the speed on the site's end. No matter what you
        do, the internet for the most part is iffy, slow, clogged,
        fogged, and dogged.

        Anyone who won't wait 4 seconds for a site to load, is
        an idiot and not worth a visit anyway.

        That person would also never visit the majority of sites online.

        Site speed is not an issue unless it takes a very, very long
        time.

        No internet site speed test is worth a peanut. There is nothing
        out there that could possibly test speed as most people would
        see it. They all have different devices, connections, and many
        intangibles that make up how you get connected.

        Google does not use it to rank a site, except in very rare (nonexistent)
        cases. I doubt google would ever ding amazon.com. I'm sure it
        takes 4 seconds or more for 99% of people connecting to it.
        And that would be on a good day, perfect internet world. And there
        aint no such thing.

        Google is not going to send people to your site instead of amazon
        because your site loads in 1 second. Yet that's what some people
        want you to believe.

        Paul
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        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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        • Profile picture of the author BrianJM85
          Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

          Come on people. Site speed many times has little to do
          with the speed on the site's end. No matter what you
          do, the internet for the most part is iffy, slow, clogged,
          fogged, and dogged.

          Anyone who won't wait 4 seconds for a site to load, is
          an idiot and not worth a visit anyway.

          That person would also never visit the majority of sites online.

          Site speed is not an issue unless it takes a very, very long
          time.

          No internet site speed test is worth a peanut. There is nothing
          out there that could possibly test speed as most people would
          see it. They all have different devices, connections, and many
          intangibles that make up how you get connected.

          Google does not use it to rank a site, except in very rare (nonexistent)
          cases. I doubt google would ever ding amazon.com. I'm sure it
          takes 4 seconds or more for 99% of people connecting to it.
          And that would be on a good day, perfect internet world. And there
          aint no such thing.

          Google is not going to send people to your site instead of amazon
          because your site loads in 1 second. Yet that's what some people
          want you to believe.

          Paul
          Page load is SERP ranking signal (along with a hundred more).
          Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using site speed in web search ranking

          Page load does matter relating to visitor engagement, especially around the 4 second mark.
          https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/
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  • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
    Originally Posted by ExcelExpert View Post

    How important is page loading times across different browsers.

    My site loads almost instantly on Explorer and Edge but there is 2-4 second delay when loading my home page of Chrome. It only affects my home page and every other page appears ok. I cant work out what the delay is caused by so I might have to live with it. (It is a WP site)

    Thanks
    https://gtmetrix.com/ is a good tool that can narrow down bottlenecks with the site itself but there's other factors as well: issues with the PC, browser, home internet etc. Since you mention it's only Chrome, I suspect it's probably an addon/extension in Chrome causing an issue. Is the browser up to date and running no plugins? Might be worth trying in incognito mode as well.

    In terms of sales - speed plays a huge factor. Regardless if "the person that won't wait is a waste of a visit" as mentioned above, loss of visitors = potential loss of sales.
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  • Profile picture of the author ExcelExpert
    Thanks again everyone.

    My thinking around the Chrome issue is one local to me i.e. there is something about my Chrome set up that is adding the extra time. I shall do some testing on that later. Which leaves me a question about the online tests posted above.

    Do they download the page on a server somewhere to get the speeds or does it download it via Chrome on my PC and time things locally? If the timing all happens on my PC via my installation of Chrome, then it would appear Chrome on my PC is slowing things down and that I'm not getting a true reflection of what sites like Google would see.

    Personally I'm not worried about the impact of a 3-4 second wait has on the reader. The percentage of people that would hit the back button in that time is very, very tiny. The reason I'm asking is in case it impacts on my sites SEO
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by ExcelExpert View Post

      T If the timing all happens on my PC via my installation of Chrome, then it would appear Chrome on my PC is slowing things down and that I'm not getting a true reflection of what sites like Google would see.
      People went gaga on site loading speed. They never really ready what
      google itself publishes.

      Google is not going to give you different websites, depending on
      your internet connection speed.

      If browsing on a smartphone, they may give you more mobile friendly
      sites. But again, these sites would be gleaned from desktop winners,
      not wannabes. People just don't care to know that.

      And seriously. Have you ever tried loading real webpages on a smartphone
      in the real world?

      Google always tries to be helpful on the outside. But their secrets are
      never given away.

      I have no idea why site speed has become such an issue still. It's
      a nonissue.

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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    • Profile picture of the author Wes @ Product Launch
      Worrying too much about minutiae.

      3-4 seconds is fine. Use caching plugin like W3 and keep it moving.

      Best,

      Wes
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      The real work starts before you launch.

      www.productlaunchignite.com

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  • Profile picture of the author couponfreak
    https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
    buddy the best tool to check your websites page speed and all the solutions to sped it up is given by this google page speed test here you will get all optimised images scripts that u need to update to your website to speed it up. check it out
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  • Profile picture of the author vithobaaseo
    Check your site in https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. If you feel your website is loading slowly you can install total cache, WP minify plugin in your wordpress site. By adding these 2 plugin all your image size will be reduced. The main reason for your website loading time is due to the image size.. Even my website also had the same problem, after adding these plugins site speed has improved
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  • Profile picture of the author ExcelExpert
    On the GTMetrix test I'm getting 3.7 seconds with a PageScore of A / 96% and a YSlow score of A / 91%. To the untrained eye (i.e. mine) that looks very positive.

    With Google test, on the mobile section I'm getting 74/100 for speed and 95/100 for user experience. On the desktop section I'm getting 89/100 overall.

    Both of which lead me on to 2 more newbie questions

    1. Will I expect to see a great ROI trying to get those scores higher?

    2. The GTMetrix score is based on viewing my site in Canada. I specifically hosted my site in the UK because the majority of my clients are in the UK. Is this something I need to worry about when tackling the US market?

    Thanks again for helping me these newbie questions, I really appreciate it. It is very rare to find such a helpful forum these days
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    • Profile picture of the author couponfreak
      Originally Posted by ExcelExpert View Post

      On the GTMetrix test I'm getting 3.7 seconds with a PageScore of A / 96% and a YSlow score of A / 91%. To the untrained eye (i.e. mine) that looks very positive.

      With Google test, on the mobile section I'm getting 74/100 for speed and 95/100 for user experience. On the desktop section I'm getting 89/100 overall.

      Both of which lead me on to 2 more newbie questions

      1. Will I expect to see a great ROI trying to get those scores higher?

      2. The GTMetrix score is based on viewing my site in Canada. I specifically hosted my site in the UK because the majority of my clients are in the UK. Is this something I need to worry about when tackling the US market?

      Thanks again for helping me these newbie questions, I really appreciate it. It is very rare to find such a helpful forum these days
      Just Download the optimized images and scripts from the test page on google and impliment it on ur site the speed will definitly increase.... ur user experiance is good but try to score above 96 to rank good in google for that all things are their like tap targets viewport etc.. hope it helps
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      • Profile picture of the author webby0031
        What a load of bullsh1t
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  • Profile picture of the author ExcelExpert
    Interesting split in opinion.

    My belief is that speed is important to a certain point. Obviously something that takes 20-30 seconds to load is going to get penalised against something that takes sub 4 seconds, What I'm not sure of is how important is speed once you are under 5 seconds, especially in my market place.

    Most Excel guys like me develop their own sites and dont hire in web designers or SEO guys. Its a very small and very uncompetitive market place in comparison to other markets. Looking at the 14 sites above me for my key phrase, non of their sites are as fast as mine on the above tests. So at this point I dont think I will get any return on making my site faster again.
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  • Profile picture of the author kwmaster
    Why not signup for google console (webmaster tools) and see what Google has to say about the crawling activity and overall performance of your website. They will crawl it less if it's slow but at least you get to know what the status is and take it from there.
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  • Profile picture of the author seothink
    2 to 3 sec is good speed loading for a website .
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