Anyone who has used the Internet would have had the experience of waiting for website pages to download while they stare at the computer screen. If it’s the website you are cursing, you don’t know the real cause of such delay.
Every website resides on a server. This is a remote computer system which houses thousands of websites or a single one, according to the kind of hosting in consideration. When you want to access a webpage on a particular website, the browser sends a request to this server. The “Response Time” is the time taken by the server to acknowledge the website query or request.
For website owners, it is imperative to learn the basic of response time and understand how it is measured. This can enable you to improve your online performance and reduce the risk of losing customers to competitor websites.
When you purchase a web hosting plan, make sure that it included website statistics as a feature. This implies that the various data records and related information will be collected and saved by the web host on your behalf. You can access such information and analyze the factors for your website’s performance.
Response time measurements should be a part of these statistics. These are great indicators of web hosting server performance. Response time data should be available for your reviewing as and when required.
Usually, response time measurement is undertaken by web hosting companies or third party services. You need to be technically advanced and capable of understanding complex scripts and codes for accurate measuring of response time. Very few website owners are adept at these tasks. It is better to restrict yourself to analysis and monitoring of response time. Your web host must offer the data in a simple, easy to understand manner. Now, there are also online tools to make a comparison of your website’s response time with other similar websites.
The response time of your website should not exceed 1-2 seconds. Otherwise, you may risk losing customers to competitors if no corrective action is taken. Don’t hesitate to point out slow response time to your web hosting provider. They should improve upon their server performance to enable speedy website loading.
Response time is definitely an important factor for having an efficient website. a website with good response time will have more potential for sales and profits as compared to a highly attractive but slow website.
