How Can I Tell If My Web Hosting Service Is Fast Enough?
The speed of one's website is one of the most important factors for attracting guests and then keeping them interested in the site. Modern Internet users are often impatient in their searches for reliable goods and services. In other words, they will leave a website that is slow to open or load. Very seldom does a person come back once he or she has been swayed by a lagging website. For this reason, website owners must be sure that they choose web hosting that optimizes their speed, which will minimize the chances of them losing many potential customers.
How Can I tell if My Web Hosting Is Fast Enough?
The good thing about website hosting is that it usually works on a month-to-month basis. That means that a website owner can seek services from another provider if he or she finds that the current provider is not doing the trick in terms of speed. A website owner can use several methods to find out if his or her website hosting is fast enough. The person could ask the customers that visit the site by adding a survey or poll to the front page. The website owner could run a speed test, as well. Additionally, the person could ask family members or friends to perform actions on the website and record their experiences.
What Is a Good Site Load Speed?
As mentioned above, a website has to have a speedy load time to keep customers interested. Recent studies by Akamai and Gomez concluded that prospective customers would give a site no more than two to three seconds to load before they abandon the sites. Some of them even tell their friends and family members that they had a poor experience. What that means for website owners is that they need to take steps to ensure that they speed up the user's experience as much as possible. Additionally, page load time can affect one's ranking on the Google search engine. Load speed is part of complex algorithm that Google uses to list the most reliable sites. Any site that takes more than three seconds to load risks chances of getting new customers and top ratings on Google.
Speed tests are available through several providers such as Pingdom, WebPageTest and GTmetrix. Many other companies provide website testing tools. The website owner can start testing a website by visiting one of those providers. Some of the providers will also offer optimization services that can help to increase load time.
40 Popular Shared Web Hosts Ranked for Page-load Speed
Not excited about the idea of having to run speed tests for multiple hosts? NCM Online tests all hosting services reviewed for speed and uptime. Click here for PDF version of their Fastest Web Hosts page.