Why You Need a CDN for Your WordPress Blog
In the webmasters’ world, the only thing that is just as important as the quality of content is to keep the visitors happy with their overall experience on the website. This is why you have to think big, even if you are at the very beginning of your blogging career.
Huge companies are aware that consumers are easily frustrated by slow loading websites, broken pages, down times and off-line for maintenance signs, and these established brands know these negative experiences will most certainly impact their business in a negative way. Studies have shown that around 40% of people abandon websites that are slow or have errors, which makes speed optimization an imperative for website owners. This is when CDN comes in.
Even though you are reaching your audience via the open Internet, meaning anyone in the world can visit your website, your consumers are still connected via the same server regardless of their physical location. A CDN (Content Distribution Network) arranges things in such a way that every client connects to a server that is physically close to them, while it perfectly replicates the content on your primary server. As there are numerous benefits of using CDN and since it’s relatively inexpensive to use it (some are even free), this is definitely an investment you need to make for your visitors.
The Need for Speed
Quite possibly the main selling point of a CDN is the speed improvement because using a CDN will significantly reduce the loading time of your site. However, don’t think it will solve all your issues with the poor loading time. For instance, your webpage might go from 13 seconds to 7 seconds loading time once you start using a CDN, which is an incredible improvement, but 7 seconds is still too much and you probably need to optimize your site more thoroughly. One of the ways to do this are WordPress Cache Plugins, or for even more advanced users, reverse proxy solutions. For the pages which are already optimized nicely, speed improvement will be even more tangible, especially if you need to load heavier or large number of files. This is when a CDN turns out to be quite a useful investment.
Reducing loading time will also result in the much coveted speed consistency, which is extremely important during traffic peaks. Whether you are running your own server or you are using shared hosting, your website will almost certainly slow down during traffic spikes, which is when a CDN can be quite helpful. CDNs are designed to handle big traffic and they will continue to do their job effectively once your page becomes rather popular, which brings us to our next topic.
Going Global while Saving up
If your goal is to reach global audience, switching to a CDN is practically a must. CDN providers have servers spread out all over the world, which means that there will always be one within a relatively small distance from where you’re connected to the Internet. This is paramount if you want all your visitors to have positive experience with your web page.
However, this still heavily depends on the coverage of your CDN provider. Another great thing about going with a CDN is that you can actually save some money. Even though it is not always free, using a CDN is often a cheaper alternative than upgrading your CPU or RAM. Moreover, it provides better UX for your visitors, which directly translates into better conversions and higher profit as well.
