Matthias Bathke Avatar

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PageLoad and the Impact

Pageload – what does that mean? Why is it important for your website and how can you influence the pageload of your WordPress site? You can find out here.

To understand the pageload of a Web site, the following example helps:

  • The purchase for the week is pending. You can’t carry more than four full shopping bags
  • Sure, you could carry more bags with a car, but the purchase and cost speak against it for you or you prefer to walk the short distance.
  • One of the shopping bags is filled up with promotional material and questionnaires by the supermarket without being asked – you only have three left.
  • Another shopping bag is filled with products they don’t even need – only two bags left at your disposal.
  • Another bag is filled with empty packaging from other products because the supermarket has not sorted them out beforehand.
  • In the end, you are left with only one bag for your products – the rest is filled with products or legacy items that you simply don’t need.

Most websites are built according to this principle – we do it differently.

Transfer to your website

What inflates your website?

Tracking & Advertising

Many websites overdo it and go by the motto: “a lot helps a lot”.

Bloatware

Often, many more features are provided than are actually needed.

Technical debt

Websites that have grown over the years often deliver legacy issues, at best without function, in bad cases with unresolved bugs or vulnerabilities.

What’s left

If you set a limit on how much weight your website should have – how much are you giving away through avoidable ballast?

What is the pageload?

The pageload is generally a term for the weight of your Web site. This is made up of the following factors:

  • Size of the page including all files.
  • Number of files, especially from external sources.
  • The entire website is delivered from the server to the user.

Size of the page

According to Google, a website should be up to 1600 KB in size. Users with a 3G mobile connection should also be able to load a website within a maximum of 10 seconds.

But even with a faster internet connection, many users have slow devices, use their smartphones for many years and therefore prefer fast websites.

Therefore, make sure that you do not exceed the target of 1600 KB.

Number of files

Especially with mobile data connections, the number of files that can be downloaded at the same time is limited – even more: The connection setup often eats up additional time.

Check your website with PageSpeed InsightsMatchMetrics‘ recommendation: A maximum of 50 requests should be needed to load your website – this includes every resource of your website, for example also images, but also files that deliver plugins or the theme. The average in Germany is between 72 and 177 resources, depending on the sector.

Check that they do not deliver more than 50 resources on your website – do not forget about feature-rich subpages.

Duration of website delivery

For example, use PageSpeed Insights to check how long a user has to wait before they can interact with your website – it’s not just the time it takes to transfer the data that matters. The effort required by the browser to calculate your design or scripts also delay the appearance of the website.

On average, it takes 22 seconds to load a mobile LandingPage. 53 of all visitors to a mobile website leave it directly if the loading time is more than 3 seconds.

Your charging time is more than three seconds?

If so, there’s a good chance your site’s bounce rate is above 50% – improving load time is your biggest lever for improving user experience and conversion rates.

We recommend a maximum charging time of 0.5 seconds.

Use your pageload for content

result

Good content consumes memory, needs to be transferred and calculated for display in the browser – don’t waste useful capacity on plugins that don’t really need it or on a theme that is wasteful with your capacity.

A low pageload leads to a higher PageSpeed and thus the Google quality factor of your website improves – in the organic index and in Adwords.

We’ve created a PageSpeed comparison for top WordPress themes – and what tools and optimizations you can use to instantly improve your site’s PageLoad.