How to Have a Faster TAS Website
Speed and Responsiveness Matter for Your Online Presence
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
Having a website for your telephone answering service is the first step in creating your online presence. Then you need to keep it up to date and add content to stay relevant. But there’s a third element, one which many businesses overlook. It’s the speed of your website. Do your pages take too long to load? Is your site sluggish?
Know that in today’s I-want-it-now world, impatient people won’t wait for a slow site to display its content. They’ll bounce. When they do, they’ll go to your competitor. Each tenth of a second of delay increases the likelihood of someone leaving your site in frustration.
Yet this is a problem you can solve. Here are some items to consider.
Hosting: The biggest factor influencing a website speed is the hosting. Shared hosting is the cheapest option and the slowest. This is because hundreds, likely thousands, of websites all run through one server. If anyone of them has problems or encounters traffic spikes, every site on that server will suffer.
The key is to move away from shared hosting. Making this change is the quickest way to increase the speed of your website. Though there are many options once you move past shared hosting, all of them will provide a faster, more responsive website. And all of them will cost more.
Though you’ll pay more for faster website hosting, this is not a place to skimp.
Graphics: The images on your website also impact its operation. A site with no pictures will be faster than one with images, but today’s users expect visuals on a website. A straight-text site will be off putting. It will also look quite dated.
The first consideration is image format. Though PNG files have a higher quality, JPG files are perfect for online, and they’re also much smaller. Though exceptions exist, converting PNG files to JPG results in a much smaller file size. And smaller loads faster. For pages with several graphics, using JPG files over PNG will result in quicker load times.
Another consideration is the dimensions of the graphic. Though websites will resize large graphics to fit smaller spaces, the better solution is to upload the right sized image to begin with. Don’t weigh your sight down with large images that you’ll never display as full-size graphics.
Bloated Features: A third consideration is bogging down your website with features you don’t use or don’t need. For WordPress, which accounts for over 40 percent of all websites, these extra options are called plugins and widgets. Other platforms use names such as apps, extensions, or add-ons.
Only install the features you need and delete everything you don’t use. Also consider the utility of each feature. Does it truly add value to your site, or does it just look cool?
The fewer things running in the background of your website, the faster it will load and the less problems you will encounter. It’s an ideal example of the saying that “less is more.”
Summary: Don’t accept a slow website, as it will cause you to lose business and frustrate users. Instead take steps to make your website faster. This will cost some money and take time, but it’s an investment worth making.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of TAS Trader. Check out his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials, ideal for medical answering services.
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Industry News
Amtelco Adds Staff to Support Increasing Customer Base: Amtelco added several new positions as part of a growth program to develop new innovations and provide even better service to their growing customer base. These include additions in various departments: implementation, software development, project management, customer support, and administration.
Recognized as a Top Workplaces employer, Amtelco is committed to designing outstanding innovations, providing the tools to help customers run their businesses more efficiently today, and software to help them build their businesses for the future.
Amtelco was founded in 1976 to provide communication solutions to the answering service and healthcare communications industry and is a leading supplier and trusted name in contact center systems, software applications, and secure texting technologies. Amtelco is focused on innovative contact center solutions that meet or exceed customer expectations and are backed by top-notch service and support.
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Quotes for the Month
“There is no material with which human beings work which has so much potential energy as words.” -Earnest Calkins
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” -Samuel Clemens
“Don’t spell part backwards. It’s a trap.” -unknown