Initial impressions are important. As my friend Rick Smith says: “You never get a 2nd chance at a first impression”.
True.
One of the most important “first impressions” is how fast the user can recieve and interpret your content. Faster is better. Period.
I have found that a number of church and ministry websites (and blogs) are extremely content heavy on the initial landing page and/or homepage, requiring the new and regular user to wait. This is probably not the best idea.
But how do you diagnose your speed and figure out what parts of content is slowing down your site?
Try the Full Page Test by Pingdom.
Enter your URL and visually see how your site loads, order, and basic overall stats including:
- Total Load Time – Total time it takes ot load the page including all objects.
- Total Objects – Total number of objects loaded that are related to the page.
- External Objects – Total number of objects from external domains.
- [X]HTML/RSS/XML/CSS – Total number for each.
- Scripts – Total scripts running on your site.
- Images – Total number of images
- Plugins – Total number of plugins
- And more…
It’s not the most comprehensive, but it’ll do the trick for your first jab at it. Take a look at my two sub-10 second websites, ChurchCrunch and Human3rror in the thumbnails.
There are some obvious rooms for improvement, namely the number of scripts and images. I use a lot on ChurchCrunch and I need to spend more time optimizing my images to be more web-ready.
So how does your blog or ministry site roll? Is it a Sub-10 winner?
Sweet. Sub-10s, but like you said, there is always room for improvement. I have used the speed report in the FF web developer toolbar. It seems to have a pretty comprehensive report.
i'm like morpheus: show me.
Haha. As long as I do not have to take the blue pill. I figure you will have seen it, but maybe someone else has not. Do I see a guest post in my future?
if you've got time. obviously you're pretty busy these days?
Yeah, actually I am going to have to pass on it. Thanks for the past opportunities, though.
of course. i know you're a busy busy guy.
Great speed test for sure. Glad to see I'm at 6 seconds, hoping to stay that way!
i bet it doesn't…!
I'm at a 6.4 on both. but a lot of objects…hmph.
objects. smodgjects.
9.5 seconds
word.
This is an important thing that most folks (including me most of the time!) don't think about. My blog loaded in 2.8, but my music website took 8.1.
2.8. wow. that's excellent…!
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised!
always feels nice…!
Hmmm, loks like I've done a great job on my church website 3.9 seconds. But it also looks like I've got some work to do on my blog, 17 seconds…
well, it's good to know, right? that's where we have to start…
Awesome find! Bookmarking this tool now…
I failed on the sub 10 second thing hitting 13 seconds but that is a stock theme so I'm not too discouraged. When I make my initial 'ground-up' theme run next month I'll aim for a fast load!
woot! let me knwo how that goes!
10.8 sec. :/
almost.. there…
My web host is completely inconsistent. I thought I was making progress (~8sec) and now I'm right back above 10sec again. weaksauce.
DOH! averages help…
I tested several times in the last hour and I'm finally sub-7 seconds on the load-time now. (Shortening blogs using the –more– code and switching web hosts really helped!)
Thanks for providing a great deal on Dreamhost!
My blog loaded at around 9 seconds. Pretty crappy since I've been hand coding all my sidebar info.
Any suggestions?
I'd have to see the results…!
Was relieved to see my new web project come in at 7 sec. ( http://YouthMinBlog.com )
I was running above 19 sec when i contacted my host (dot5hosting). The re(something) the mySQL database and now it is below 10. I’m needing to re-optimize some of my images I think. I’m sure you have a post on that topic, now I just have to find it