A slow website can affect your Squarespace website in terms of user experience and ranking in search engine results, as Google views page speed as important. Research has also shown that visitors can click out of a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This article provides practical tips to speed up your Squarespace website, such as resizing large images, choosing performance-optimized templates and eliminating unnecessary third-party scripts. The use of caching and testing the speed of AMP pages are also suggested to improve performance. Squarespace is also designed with performance in mind by pre-selecting web-safe fonts and offering helpful tools like Website Speedy for regular performance checks.
A slow Squarespace website can have a negative impact on your business, reducing the likelihood of visitors completing actions on your site and affecting your rankings in search engine results.
Google takes into account page speed when determining a site’s ranking, therefore slow websites may lose their first-page ranking. Research shows that a one second delay in website loading can lower user satisfaction by up to 16%.
Tips on speeding up a Squarespace website include resizing large image files before uploading to reduce file size, choosing performance-optimized templates and eliminating unnecessary third-party scripts.
Browser caching can also help to store resources such as images and CSS for future visits for faster rendering times, and redirects should be kept to a minimum to avoid slowing down the loading times of a page.
Using AMP pages for your Squarespace blog posts is another way to optimize for mobile users, who typically experience slower load times due to weaker internet connections.
Custom fonts can also affect website loading times, as they require more HTTP requests. To optimize for performance, it is recommended to use no more than two fonts, opt for web-safe fonts if possible, and adjust the font-display settings to “swap” to prevent rendering delays.
Regular performance checks can help you diagnose issues and improve your Squarespace website’s functionality. Tools like Website Speedy can help diagnose your website and provide expert advice on how to improve its performance.
Optimizing your Squarespace website for speed can enhance user satisfaction, reduce bounce rates, and improve your rankings in search engine results.
Ishan Makkar, the founder of WebsiteSpeedy, recommends using their innovative tool to optimize website performance and improve your site’s speed, user experience, Google rankings, and conversions.