Fun Facts! II

Having Faster Internet Can Also Have Loading Problems

As the internet speed is getting faster and technology improving there are times that a certain website is too slow to load. Even though you installed a faster internet connection like fiber optic cable, a certain web page can make you antsy. Today, a website must not exceed 3 or more seconds because if they did they will lose a lot of viewers and profits. In fact, forty-percent of users will likely click the exit or return button if the page loads more than 3 seconds. That is how impatient we are.

Below is the list of reasons why a page loads slower than the consumer's expected:

The Distance between the Server and the End-user

As you enter the website's name or its IP address of that website in the address bar of the browser which is called the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), you request the server to display the site's page on your browser. This server is a computer that store webpages, sites or applications, and process the client's request. However, the distance between the user and the server affects the speed of page load. The greater the distance, the greater the latency. Latency is the time it takes to send the request from the user to the server and process the received request. The higher the latency, the slower the page loads.

Sometimes, a server that runs in old hardware can increase the latency. So, it might not be your internet connection's fault but maybe it is the server for being too old or being too far from you.

Website Content

It is common knowledge that a pure text loads faster than an image. So, expect that a site you are accessing that contains too many heavy and large photos or images will take time to load. That website is trying to resize without affecting the quality of the image which can really slows the process of displaying the results.

Too Many Unnecessary Line of Codes and Scripts Running

As the page load, it loads the every line of codes sequentially. Sometimes, the programmer or developer injects a lot of outside resources which eats a lot of time because the computer must find the encoded file source especially if the programmer creates multiple external CSS stylesheets (a language used to describe how the elements of the website should appear on screen).

While in scripts, which is responsible for making the site responsive or interactive, too much is always a bad thing. Multiple scripts running can affect the performance of the website. It takes time for jQuery and Javascript, web programming languages used in creating a website, to be interpreted and executed. So developers are using API (Application Programming Interface), cache, and AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), a website building tools which improve website functionality and save the frequently accessed data resulting to better performance, time-saving and customer satisfaction.

So blame the programmer for being too lazy to do inline CSS or remove unnecessary lines of code. 

Network Congestion

Every visitor that clicks the site is in a queue because each request is processed in order. So if there are a lot of people visiting a popular website like facebook, expect that it will load slowly. This event happens to anyone even if that person has the fastest internet.  And probably you experienced having a faster loading time at night time than in the daytime because there more users on the network during the day than the night which is a good advantage for night owls.

So before you hit your wi-fi router or plug or unplug your ethernet cable or call your internet service provider and criticizing them for being a horrible provider, try to remember these things mentioned above. It might not be your internet speed's fault but rather the websites' or server's fault.