Image by Zsuzsanna Kilián

Website speed has always been something that’s emphasized since it tends to turn visitors away. Few visitors will be willing to sit and wait for your website to load. That alone should be great reason to make sure your web host is up to par.

Lately, I’ve noticed another important reason why slow websites can cost you. You see, in the past, most sites have been built using static HTML. These files are small and quite low load on the server they are easy for the server to dish out so a basic to low end server could load those pages quickly. Since more and more sites today are powered by some kind of blogging system or some kind of content management system, it also means the site uses a combination of backend systems (like PHP, ASP, Ruby and CGI) and databases.

This uses more resources than a plain HTML file. Which means, low and even some mid level servers need to work really hard to find the pages, and put them together to be displayed to the user. If the server cannot keep up, the result is a slow website.

But bear in mind, with most content management system or blogging systems, you’d write your posts and articles directly on the site by logging in. In other words, you are technically a visitor to your own website as well. If your web server is slow, the pages within your admin area is slow too. The end result – you waste time waiting for your admin pages to load as you work.

Don’t spend your time twiddling your fingers waiting for your site to load. Either upgrade or switch to a web host who can keep up with you.