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How to Achieve Fast Load Times Using a Drag & Drop Builder
on 14 June 2023, by Bogdan, in Blog, Cloud, Guides
by Bogdan
Load times play an important role in the user experience of your site visitors. For this reason, you should always be looking to minimize it on your website. Thankfully, you can do this effortlessly with the drag-and-drop website builder we’ll discuss here.
In this article, we’ll look at how you can achieve fast load times with efficient design using the Brizy drag-and-drop builder. But, before we get to that, let’s have an insight into page load time and why it is important.
What is load time and why is it important?
Website load time refers to the duration it takes for a web page to fully load and become visible to a user. It is a measure of the time between when a user clicks to view a web page and when all of its elements, including text, images, etc., are fully rendered and ready for use.
As mentioned earlier, load times play an important role in user experience. Specifically, fast load times are desirable since they contribute to a positive user experience. Fast load times allow users to access the content they’re looking for without delay and have a smooth browsing experience.
On the other hand, slow load times can cause users to become frustrated and abandon your website. This can have severe implications for your website’s conversions as studies show that a 1-second delay causes a reduction in conversions by 7%.
Given that a 1-second delay causes a 7% dip in conversions, what is the desirable web page load time?
What is the desirable web page load time?
Ideally, your website should not take longer than 2 seconds to load, but 3 seconds is also marginally acceptable. Anything beyond this will likely increase the bounce rate on your website.
Today, users expect your website to load in 3 seconds or less. Research reveals that 40% of desktop users and 53% of mobile users will abandon a website if it loads for more than 3 seconds.
Source: Master Blogging
Apart from enhancing user experience and improving conversions, fast load times have the following benefits:
- Improved SEO ranking - Website load time is one of the metrics used in SEO ranking. A fast load time will allow search engine bots to crawl through your site quickly and index it instantly. This will help to rank your website high on the search engine results page (SERP) which subsequently sets up your site to receive more organic traffic.
- It provides you with a competitive advantage - Nearly all businesses today have websites, with each one putting a lot of effort to optimize their online services. Users have many options to choose from, making the business environment competitive. Fortunately, fast load times can help you to differentiate yourself from your competitors and customers will likely choose you as you offer a faster and more efficient experience.
If you want to convert or retain more traffic and improve your SEO ranking, fast load times for your website must be a top priority for you. Before optimizing your website’s load times, you need to know how to measure it first.
How to measure your website load times
Page load time is an important metric to measure when evaluating the performance of your website. There are a few different ways to do this and we’ll have a look at two of these methods.
Using browser developer tools
Modern browsers like Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox have built-in developer tools which you can use to measure your site’s load times. If you’re using Chrome, you can do this by going to Options > More Tools > Developer Tools and clicking on the Network tab.
Next, refresh the website and you’ll see a detailed breakdown of the resources loaded and the corresponding load times.
Using online software solutions
There are numerous online tools that are available to use for measuring your website’s load time. The most popular ones include Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix. Although the tools we’ve mentioned are incredibly useful, they have a variety of metrics that may confuse you or are not specific to load times.
For a simple and specific load time measurement tool we recommend SpeedLab by Browser Stack. All you’ll have to do is paste your site’s URL and allow it to run for a few minutes. It will then relay your site’s load time along with other useful data on its performance.
Suppose you’ve measured your website and found that it has slow load times, what might cause this?
Causes of website slow load times
There are numerous factors that can cause a website to load slowly. Assuming that there are no network problems or server performance issues, here are some of those factors.
- Unsuitable server location
When your hosting provider’s servers are far away from your users, your website will have slow load times. Simply put, the further away the servers are, the slower the website. This is because requests will have to travel a longer distance to reach the client (that is the user’s browser).
- Bulky code files
All websites are built on code, even those that you set up using a website builder. With a drag and drop website builder, each element, layout, popup, etc., is precoded, and the service provider maintains its code files. If the service provider has inefficiently coded these elements they will end up with bulky code files which could cause your users to experience slower load times.
- Overdependence on external resources
When a website depends on too many external resources, for instance, plugins, external code files, etc., to serve users properly, it will experience slower load times. This is worsened if the external resources have not been optimized for speed.
- Large file sizes
Websites with large file sizes, such as high-resolution images, or videos, can take longer to load. Each file needs to be downloaded by the user's browser, and larger files require more time to transfer over the Internet.
A website will also have slow load times if there are too many user requests within a short time and also if it contains numerous ads. In addition, if your website is not optimized for mobile devices, it tends to be slower when loaded on a mobile phone or tablet.
There are many more factors that can lead to slow load times, but the good news is that you can overcome load time challenges via efficient design using a drag and drop website builder.
So, if you’re looking to achieve fast load times using a drag and drop builder, then Brizy is perfect for you.
Brizy drag and drop builder: Perfect for fast load times with efficient design
Brizy is a versatile no-code platform on which you can build any type of website. To help you efficiently design your website(s) for fast load times, Brizy has the following features.
Everything your website needs all in one place
Brizy provides you with everything you need to build your website and put it online. This way, you won't have to over-rely on external resources to keep your website running. This includes a drag and drop website builder with over 36 different elements to choose from and a template library to help you to build these websites faster.
It also provides you with an in-house Popup and Alerts builder. You can use this to create marketing popups, cookie notifications, etc., without bringing in an external popup builder which could slow down your website. It also has integrations for email marketing, WordPress, and media and font tools, so that when you need to use these external resources, they won’t severely impact your site’s loading time.
A clean code and optimized drag and drop website builder
Each element, layout, and block on Brizy’s website builder is built with clean code. This means that it avoids generating bulky code files that could slow your website’s load times. Using Brizy, you’ll be able to build clean code websites that are optimized for performance. Your sites will be more efficient and avoid unnecessary usage of resources and computations.
Unlimited hosting and traffic from its cloud-based CDN
In addition to the website builder and popup builder, Brizy also comes with a high-performance content delivery network (CDN) free of charge. This powerful CDN has 35+ locations distributed globally, including North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania, and South Africa.
When users make requests, they will be loaded from the data center that is closest to them. This reduces the distance that requests have to travel to reach the user’s browser and hence cuts down load times. As a result, sites built with Brizy deliver high performance and are highly available even when they receive numerous requests.
The CDN solves the problem of unsuitable server locations and it is available to use for any project built on Brizy.
Optimization across all devices
Brizy is also equipped to help you to realize slow load times for your websites on mobile devices. Every layout and customization option is mobile-optimized.
This ensures that you’ll be able to design websites that perform well on mobile devices.
Conclusion
Load times play a crucial role in how well you convert and retain site visitors. A faster load time is desirable and the Brizy drag and drop website builder can help you to achieve this via efficient design. It is a powerful solution that encloses a variety of tools that will help you to build fast-loading and efficient websites. With Brizy drag and drop website builder, you will achieve fast load times for your websites across different devices.
Start building better websites today!
Article by Bogdan
Co-founder & Head of Design, Bogdan has a passion for everything that works great and looks awesome. Guilty for most of the UI and UX around this place, you can say "Hi" to him at bogdan at brizy dot io
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