There have been page speed improvements made to Rocketspark sites recently where we have seen an increase in page speed across most sites. We have seen some great wins where we have seen an improvement over the last few months - we have tested this by choosing a selection of websites where we have tracked their page speed.
As each site is unique we have seen some sites improve more than others, as an overall trend it has been very positive, however, there are some sites that have not improved as much as others. If you have noticed that your page speed is not scoring as well as you would have hoped there are a few things that may be affecting this:
1. Facebook Chat:
We have noticed a substantial drop in page speed when a Facebook Chat widget is added to a site. We recommend reviewing if Facebook Chat is needed for your website and if another alternative could be used, such as a contact form or a different live chat.
2. Autoplay Videos:
If there are autoplay videos on your website this will impact your page speed as the page will try to load this at the same time as the content on the page. If you are concerned we would recommend having this as a video block where the customer can play the video when they are ready.
3. Multiple widgets:
The more widgets that are added to a site will impact the page speed as the page will also need to be able to load the widgets as well as the rest of the page. What we recommend here is to use widgets such as Elfsight widgets that load after the page loads.
4. Large galleries:
If you have large galleries on your website this may slow down your sites page speed as it means that there is more content that the page needs to load which will slow it down, Rocketspark does apply compression to your website to help with page speed.
Page Speed on Mobile
We have had a lot of people come through lately about SEO 'experts' who are wanting to help them with page speed on mobile phones. This information should be taken very lightly as there are some things that we can change but there are other things that cannot be changed.
Mobile speed according to different page speed testers can never be in the 90s and it is nearly impossible to get a score of 60s or 70s.
Things you can change:
- Image sizes + resolution can affect speed. If you have a large image on your website and it is at a high resolution, this can cause the website to load slowly as it is trying to get the image at the best quality. You can change the image to be smaller in size and not so high resolution by changing it in a photo editor and then uploading the image in replace of the high-quality image.
- A large amount of content can affect speed. If you have a page that is full of content it can cause the page speed to be affected. We would suggest changing the content to be condensed or split the content over multiple pages.
Things we cannot change and will not affect the speed of your website:
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The unused Java Script and any CSS cannot be changed on a Rocketspark website and will not affect the speed of your website.
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Image tags are another one people are coming through saying that it is affecting the page speed, this however is not the case. Image tags do not affect the page speed of a website.
If you are still concerned about your page speed here is a guide to help put your mind at ease: Page Speed Blog
If you are still concerned about page speed, please get in touch with our support team who will be happy to help: support@rocketspark.com