In the year 2000, the average human attention span was 12 seconds, which is not a lot to begin with. Today, researchers say that our attention span has decreased to a mere 8.25 seconds. It seems, with the constant bombardment of information, we have trained ourselves to decide within a matter of seconds whether or not waiting is worth our time.

Your website is like a high-speed race car. Any race car can have sleek edges, and all types of gadgets, but, take away the engine and oil, and all you’ve got is a pretty hunk of potential sitting in the garage.

Your website is like a high-speed race car. Any race car can have sleek edges, a shiny paint job, custom-built seats, and all types of gadgets, but, take away the engine and oil, and all you’ve got is a pretty hunk of potential sitting in the garage.

If you are building your chassis or sitting on the starting grid, here are some practical tips to increase your website’s capacity, so you can start your engine and go!

Website Speed – Your Engine

The fastest car wins down the straightaway. Training your website for this highly competitive race is what keeps you leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. If the loading time is slow, guess what? You have just lost your audience. Google and other search-engine bots such as Bing scan your website and rank it according to its loading speed.

You can measure the speed of a website by going to a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Any speed between 80 and 100 is exceptional; anything above 60 is acceptable. Any speed below that, you’ve got problems.

If all you need is a website with a simple presentation of your services, use website-builder systems such as Squarespace or Wix, but take into consideration that those options are limited in terms of customization and you will not be able to optimize your site for search engines other than by using the basic, standard tools and plugins that these systems offer.

Frameworks for Speed – The Structure You Need

When choosing a framework, if you are thinking of using WordPress . . . good luck, because you will have to spend tremendous development hours hacking your way through plugins to even cross the 50-mark.

If you need a website with more sophisticated logic such as payment or donations systems, advanced marketing tools, custom sales funnels, login systems, or other kinds of complex interactions, consider creating a custom website in GatsbyJS or Next.js (both frameworks of React).

If you need a website with more sophisticated logic, consider creating a custom website in GatsbyJS or Next.js (both frameworks of React).

In order to achieve maximum speed with any framework, one key is to use image-compression libraries and tools such as Gatsby Image. By compressing the images on your website and delivering the lowest possible file size to your visitors based on their devices (without losing image quality), you can increase your website performance tremendously.

(Discover more about choosing the right frameworks!)

Mobile Readiness – Easy Access, Easy Life

Statistics say there are a staggering 2.7 billion smartphone users around the world, so it comes as no surprise that more than 50% of web visitors today will search for you through their mobile browsers, not their desktop browsers. Accessibility is the name of the game. You want to make sure that, no matter where a person is when you pop into their head, finding you is as quick and easy as moving their hand to their pocket.

Search-engine bots such as Google will scan your website to check how mobile-responsive it is and rank it accordingly. Therefore, when you’re developing your website, keep in mind the importance of it being easily adaptable to and accessible on any mobile device, and make sure that you’re following the mobile-responsive-design best practices. 

You’ll need to choose a team of skilled and talented web developers and designers capable of making sure your website is mobile-friendly. You won’t regret investing in this facet of your website.

If you’re training for the big race but aren’t yet a website grease-monkey, we’d love to help! 

Please don’t hesitate to contact us.