When a website gets slower, its conversion rate drops by an average of 4.42 percent for every extra second they take to load (between seconds 0-5), Portent.
Medical websites are essential tools for doctors and patients alike. They provide information about diseases, treatments, and other health issues. However, if they load slowly, they can cause frustration and even discourage visitors from returning.
The Internet has become an important and integral part of modern life. People rely heavily on the Internet to access medical information, research and communicate with friends and family.
Website speed affects user experience. For example, slow loading times can result in lost patients and fewer appointments. In addition, slow loading speeds can also reduce patient satisfaction.
How Does Website Speed Affect User Experience?
A website’s speed is the most important factor affecting the overall success of your healthcare business.
When patients visit your website, their first impression is based on how fast it loads. Therefore, if it takes too long to load, they may leave before getting what they need. It could mean that you lose potential patients or appointments.
Slow-loading sites also have lower search engine rankings. Google uses website page speed as one of its ranking factors. A faster site will rank higher than a slower site.
Test Your Healthcare Practice Website Speed
To check if your site has any issues regarding its loading time, use the Google PageSpeed Insight tool. It fetches your site, analyses its structure, and suggests improvements.
Google PageSpeed Insight provides both scorecards for mobile and desktop devices, breaking down their results into speed and optimization.
The website optimization score may vary for mobile and desktop, depending upon its optimization level. However, most websites are designed and developed for desktop view, so you may get a lower score on mobile devices.
What Can You Do To Improve Your Website Loading Time?
There are many things you can do to improve your website’s performance. Here are some tips:
Optimize Images
Images are important elements of any web design. However, they can take up a lot of space and make your pages heavy.
They can increase your page weight if you do not optimize them correctly. Unfortunately, this means they will take longer to load and might even crash your browser.
You should remove all unneeded images from your website. If you need to keep an image, resize it to fit your web page’s width and height dimensions.
Minify JavaScript
JavaScript is another major component of a website. It helps add interactivity to your pages. But, if you are not careful, it can slow down your website.
JavaScript minification removes whitespace characters from code without affecting its functions. As a result, it allows it to run faster and load more quickly.
Compress HTML
HTML is the basic building block of every website. You save bandwidth and reduce your page’s size when you compress it.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network distributes content across multiple server locations. As a result, the servers closest to users respond more quickly.
Remove Unnecessary Scripts
Unnecessary script tags can slow down your site’s performance.
Reduce HTTP Requests
Reduce HTTP requests by using HTTPS instead of HTTP. It will help to improve the website speed.
Remove Unused Stylesheets
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. They control the look and feel of websites.
Remove Unwanted Elements
The fewer elements you have on a page, the better. You can help reduce your page’s weight by removing unwanted elements.
Enable compression
Enable Gzip compression to compress data before sending it over the network.
Remove unused CSS
Remove unused stylesheets to reduce file sizes. Reducing the number of files slows down the process of downloading the website.
Add Expires headers
Add an “Expires” header to prevent browsers from caching pages.
Avoid redirecting
Avoid redirecting when possible. Redirects take longer to complete.
Use a cache plugin
Cache plugins store webpages locally to be accessed without connecting to the server.
Do not use Flash
Flash can slow down your website because it needs to download additional files.
Final Thoughts
A fast website is far more important than many people realize, as it can greatly impact the success of your healthcare business. As patients will see your website as the first point of view, the speed of your website is crucial to making the first impression. Conversely, if your website is slow, it will typically reduce the time a patient will spend on your clinic’s site and affect their perception of your overall reputation.
For the best caching plugins, check out our dedicated article on the 4 best WordPress caching plugins to speed up your website.