After Google started using website speed as a parameter in their ranking algorithms every webmaster has a good reason to keep an eye on the page load speed of their website. Google’s bending over backwards to spread the word about this new speed penalty is proof in itself since big G is usually very secretive about pending algorithm changes.
From the announcement we learn that the speed penalty was introduced following experiments by Google that revealed the impact website speed has on Internet users.
But the results of the experiment come as no surprise even for someone that has started to use the Internet recently; users prefer websites that load faster and tend to spend more time on such websites.
However, the search engine giant has been careful to state that even though website speed is now a factor, it is not the primary parameter for determining results. The quality and relevance of information is still the determining factor, but if your website speed is slow, you will receive a Google penalty.
This implies that it is important for you as a webmaster to assess the speed of your website to determine whether you are moving further down the search engine results pages (SERPs) because your website is slower than your direct competitors.
How Can Google Know Your Page Speed?
It is vital that you understand the basics of how Google’s algorithm determines your website speed and thus your SERP ranking. The search engine uses two main factors when it comes to speed assessment.
First, your website will receive a higher speed ranking if it responds faster to Googlebot, the crawler program Google uses to find and index websites.
Second, your website will also receive a good speed ranking if it records a faster loading time on Google Toolbar than your competition. To better assist you in analyzing your website speed, Google has added a page speed report to their webmaster tools found within the Google webmasters ‘lab’ section.
The tool and the reports can be used to compare your website’s page load times to that of other websites. Once you are armed with the information of where your page ranks in the speed hierarchy, you can start to make the necessary code and structure changes to make it respond faster.
Your first priority should be to make sure you have no SLOW pages on your site. Pages that take two seconds or more to load and pages that are marked as SLOW in Google Webmaster Tools need to be improved to avoid a Google penalty for website speed.
When you have no slow pages left, try to make all your pages load in less than a second. Read on to see why this is important.
Having a website that loads quickly has more benefits than just higher search engine ranking and avoiding a Google penalty.
A website optimized for speed reduces the bandwidth required on your hosting service, thus reducing your overall hosting costs.
Faster websites also provide a better browsing experience because users are able to get information faster and navigate through your website more easily.
In addition, websites optimized for speed work better when accessed on mobile phones, PDAs and other devices that do not have the same level of processing memory as your standard laptop or desktop computer.
Even though you can have a mobile variant of your website which is trimmed down, some users will want to view your site in full HTML on their phone or PDA and a faster loading website will have a better chance of successfully loading on such devices.
As a webmaster, there are a number of free tools that you can use to improve the loading speed of your website. I have listed three of the more popular ones below:
Page Speed
Page Speed is an open-source add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser. It evaluates the speed of your website and gives you suggestions on how to improve your website speed.
Page Speed runs tests on the architectural configuration of both your web server and your website’s front end code. After running these tests, it gives you a report on your website speed and suggestions on how to improve the speed of your website.
Yslow
Yslow is a free Firefox add-on from Yahoo integrated with Firebug software for website development. It displays statistics, an evaluation report and also provides suggestions on how best to improve the speed of your website using best practices.
Yslow comes integrated with other tools for performance evaluation, including Smush. Use it and JSLint to further enhance your website performance. Yslow is a Yahoo product but is still useful for avoiding the Google speed penalty.
SSEL Speed Tools
There is also a website speed check at Secret Search Engine Labs where you can get a quick answer on how big your webpage is and how fast it loads.
The Website Speed Quick Fix
There are several factors that affect page load speeds on your website, many of them technical and best solved by your webmaster or developer, but some changes you can do yourself as long as you have some experience with HTML and creating web pages.
Reduce the number, size and quality of images and use less audio, flash and Javascript. Reduce the length of the page by splitting a long page into several short pages. Strip the source code of redundant HTML, Javascript and CSS code that just slows things down. Don’t use images and other components that are linked live from other domains; instead use a copy on your own server.
And don’t forget to keep your eyes on Google Webmaster Tools to see how your site performs compared to the competition.
Aaron Steinheinkel is virtual lab scientist at Secret Search Engine Labs,
a new search engine. Use the
website speed checker to improve the speed of your website.
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Website Speed Penalty – Google is Testing Your Load Time!
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There are many ways to deal with customer support at your website. Which method you choose will depend on how large your company is, what your customers want, and what you feel most comfortable with.
One of the classic ways of handling customer service and support is via telephone. This is often the preferred methods for customers, because they can usually get their problems resolved much faster than they might using other methods.
Unfortunately, providing telephone support probably isn’t realistic unless you have the staff to handle it and your product or service is selling at a price that covers the often huge additional cost of staffing an inbound call center. If you’re a solo operation, phone support may well be out of the question. So what other options are available to you?
The two major alternatives are e-mail and support ticket systems.
Email support lets you answer support requests in your own time, but it may upset some of your more impatient customers. There will always be people who will fly into a rage if their email isn’t answered within 5 minutes, even at 3am on Sunday morning!
The other problem with e-mail support is spam. If you make an e-mail address available for support it won’t be long before you’re starting to receive significant qualities of spam and ultimately the e-mail address can become completely unusable. Even with spam filters installed it’s difficult, even bordering on impossible, to stop at least some spam coming through. The last thing you want is to have to spend more time deleting spam than helping your valued customers and that’s exactly what can happen if you’re not careful.
On the plus side, e-mail is easy to handle for both the sender and yourself. It’s easy to set up standard replies for commonly asked questions and it’s also possible to reroute e-mails to different addresses should the need arise (e.g. when someone hasn’t received a shipment and you need to bring this to the attention of your shippers).
An alternative to e-mail that is well worth considering is a support ticket system.
More and more people are starting to turn to support ticket systems, or help desk software as it is often known, to handle their support requests. Although this is generally one of the best methods for the companies that use them, they can be troublesome to the customer.
Many help desks require the user to register in order to submit a request. This takes time out of the customer’s busy schedule, and may annoy them further if they’re already upset about something related to your product.
Some of them even require the user to verify their email address before they can log in to submit a request. This could be particularly upsetting if your server happens to take longer than a minute or two to send out the confirmation request.
Customers can be very impatient, especially if they haven’t received something they paid for or if they have a problem with something they did receive. Once people reach their maximum tolerance level, the hassle will usually no longer be worth it, and they’ll ask for a refund and that’s obviously something you don’t want to happen.
Support ticket systems do have some advantages and these can easily outweigh the downsides.
Ticket systems are an excellent way of managing the support work-flow. They keep everything in one place and make it very easy to see all the previous messages relating to any support issue. This is useful for both the customer and yourself as it saves having to search through old e-mails (some of which may well have been deleted) to find previous correspondence.
Ticket systems can also help you to get a real handle on what the major issues are. In an e-mail support system it’s easy for this to be hidden in the deluge of e-mails whereas in a ticket system it is usually possible to categorize incoming tickets so that matters pertaining to a specific subject can easily be monitored.
Ticket systems also usually offer far more robust reporting than a standard e-mail system. This makes it easy to see how many tickets are opened/closed each day and who dealt with them.
Another benefit to ticket systems is that they can avoid the issue of non-delivered e-mails. The problem of valid e-mails not arriving at their destination is one that all companies face on an increasingly frequent basis. By providing a ticket system that people can view whenever they like means you don’t have to rely solely upon e-mails getting through.
No matter which method you choose, it’s important to respond to requests as soon as possible. Due to the very nature of the Internet, people expect immediate gratification. Since the Internet is available 24/7 in most places, people tend to think Internet businesses are also open 24/7 and that is rarely the case, even with very large companies such as Microsoft and Apple.
These expectations may be unrealistic, but that is the reality you face as an Internet marketer. Some people will expect you to be available at all hours of the day, even on weekends or holidays. You can’t alleviate this problem completely, but by dealing with incoming support requests as promptly and efficiently as possible you will go a long way to satisfying the needs of the vast majority of your customers, and that is what’s important.
Paul Smithson is the creator of the
XSitePro Web Design Software,
XHeader, the free tool for designing web site and blog header graphics and XCommentPro, the web site commenting tool. His areas of expertise include business strategy, ecommerce, online and traditional marketing,
software development and maximizing the potential of online businesses. Visit
www.xsitepro.com and
www.xheader.com.
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How Will You Handle Customer Support for Your Site?
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