Loading times of art websites

HappyLady Level 1

December 16, 2018, 10:29 pm

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Loading times of art websites

I was not sure what category to place this post under. My son and sister have art websites and yesterday I talked to another young artist who had a website. All of them have websites which take too long to load. One has a front page which irritates me. I don't want to wait forever for a front page that tells me to click on anything. Nor do I want to hang around waiting for pictures to load. As we all know, if this happens, I lose interest and go elsewhere. Does anyone on here have SEO advice or general advice for artists websites? The problem is, if you sell pictures, you need a lot of visual stuff, but to make everything uniform can destroy the effect of the picture. It isn't always helpful to resize all the work to a standard size. People who make websites are not usually also artists. My sister paid someone who made a website but did not understand her needs and she ended up doing most of it herself. I probably should ask the question on a photography site as well but it is all relevant in the end. What I am thinking of doing is creating an email for all three with the relevant advice for website creation. It is easier to say some things third hand, if you get my drift. Yesterday the pictures were lovely but waiting for them to load made me feel like I was watching paint dry.

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Alania

Alania

Well either the website is overwhelmed with heavy designs and information, or the domain is simply slow. Perhaps there's a lot of traffic. Do you happen to get the error 502 bad gateway by chance?

6 years ago

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HappyLady

HappyLady

No, no error, but all three are prolific artists who want to sell their work online. It will be the pictures loading that slows the site down.

6 years ago

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Kakashi2020

Kakashi2020

If a site takes too long to load then 50 percent of traffic would leave within 3 seconds, another 30 percent in 5 seconds. A slow loading website risk losing a lot of customers and or followers which means if it's a selling website, it would lose revenue.

Website speed is important to SEO. The faster it loads, the higher the rankings by search engines. This is because Google prefers fast loading sites. Google rewards fast loading website with a higher ranking in search engine results. By boosting the loading speed, rankings, user experience and traffic are also boosted.

There are a lot of ways of speeding up the loading speed of a site. Here are some of them.

1.Pay for a good Hosting Plan.
Free or shared hosting is no no. Get a dedicated one.

2.Enable Browser Full Caching, doing this would significantly improve loading speed.

3.Optimized Compression by using Gzip Compression. Using it would compress your files to a Zip file which would significantly boost the speed of your site.

4.Remove unimportant Plugins because they make your site sluggish.

5.OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES
Just reduce it's size by using a plugin. Also change your website theme, choose one with a simple code and disable Hotlinking.

6 years ago

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amelia88

amelia88

This was a really helpful and detailed reply. I don’t operate an art website specifically but I think we’re all often trying to find ways to make our sites load faster. Great tips.

6 years ago

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HappyLady

HappyLady

Thank you for this helpful reply. I wonder is any of them even know what a zip is or how to do that, but I will suggest it,

6 years ago

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theresajane

theresajane

This is a very helpful reply. Though I am not an expert in this field, I think I'm learning through the comments

6 years ago

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jaymish2

jaymish2

I would advise that they get their websites professionally designed. I think because they have loads of pictures they need to use a different programme and template for their website to load quickly. I know that if the loading time is slow it affects your SEO and ranking on google, so you should do this as soon as possible.

6 years ago

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HappyLady

HappyLady

Except, in my sister's case she paid a so called professional. This person had qualifications, but clearly misunderstood what my sister wanted and bit off more than they were capable of. My guess is they are the ones who should have known about zip compression. The other two probably cannot afford a professional. However, if my sister is better than they are, then maybe they can get her to do something I will ask her if she zipped her files.

6 years ago

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dullian

dullian

Sounds like bad optimization. Are you familiar with code so you can see what's wrong with the pages?
If showing small images is a concern for you, you should have an option that allows the user to see the pictures in full detail, like opening in a new tab the image in full resolution.

6 years ago

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HappyLady

HappyLady

Well, now I have to eat my hat. My sister's website is superb and I know she was the one sorting the pictures in the end. I guess the end result is to get her to sort the websites for the other two. I wish I could show you, but these sites are commercial so probably not allowed on a forum. I am so impressed! I know she worked hard, but I think on the making of websites my little sister just outran me and I better ask her to make one for me.

6 years ago

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theresajane

theresajane

Loading times for a website is really a bad experience for both the admin and the user. That's like the number one enemy of everyone.

6 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

I am not well versed with technical matters but I know that the loading of the web page depends on the size in terms of megabytes. When you have an image that has a high resolution of say 100 mb compared to the same image with a resolution of 50 mb it is logical that the small size will be quicker to display. I guess they have to tone down the resolution of the images or maybe the display would be a smaller frame and a click can enlarge it to full size. Just my thoughts.

6 years ago

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theresajane

theresajane

I also think the same, though I am not well-versed with technicalities too. It's a matter of proportions if the size of the page is big, then the higher chance of loading.

6 years ago

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overcast

overcast

I think art websites that has lot of media elements are harder to load. And they being having the elements that often take more time on the slow connection. I think only the CDN can speed them. CDN basically serve the static version of your site. And that helps the sites to load your website quickly. And CDN are always getting the connection requests from nearby server. So it definitely helps out.

6 years ago

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theresajane

theresajane

I am not well-versed with the technical aspects, so CDN is actually new for me. Does CDN help even if a user has a slow internet connection?

6 years ago

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overcast

overcast

CDN does not help in case of slow connection. But it does reduce the website capacity and make it small enough to accessed by slow connection. So say like some sites have 1MB capacity and your phone can download 40kb per sec. And in such case CDN reduces the 1MB website into say 512 kb data and it is easier that way.

6 years ago

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cmoneyspinner

cmoneyspinner

Have they tried WIX? I see WIX advertising that you can create an artist website.

6 years ago

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Tehilah27

Tehilah27

I always leave a slow loading website after refreshing once so those are potential customers they are losing by the second. The resolution of the images are probably really high but since they are to be sold, it needs to be that way to attract customers. I think you need to get someone verse in the code to take a look at the website and resolve the issue.

6 years ago

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kaka135

kaka135

Good that your sister has got the issue solved, and I am sure she has learned a lot while working on the website, though the professional didn't really help her with that. I agree that long waiting time can really be a website killer, as not many people nowadays have the patience to wait. I like the idea of some websites to show only thumbnails or lower resolution pictures in the gallery first, when someone is interested in that particular picture, then only they click on the thumbnail to view the larger picture. I think this helps any visitors to wait for all the pictures, even those they might not be interested, to be fully loaded at the beginning. Moreover, waiting for one picture to be loaded is easier.

6 years ago

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