Have you tried to stream a video or download something from the Internet and feel like it's going at a snail's pace, especially compared to a few years ago?
No it isn't your imagination, and it certainly isn't AT&T or other service providers holding back on their customers (or is it?). The real reason is that websites are growing in size, which in turn cause slower load times.
Three years ago, according to HTTP Archive, average websites were 1.1 MB in size. That size has nearly doubled to 2.1MB in 2015. There are various reasons why this is the case:
• In order to boost traffic, sites have been adding more content in the form of videos, images, interactive plug-ins and other code/script heavy features.
• To be able to accommodate different users accessing the site on various platforms, developers are creating more versions of websites and apps that apply to all devices. More code is needed for each version, thus making it larger in size.
• Advertisers also want to grab the user's attention with flashy displays for products, once again adding more bandwidth.
Of course these aren't the only reasons. Factors such as poor connection or high traffic in a network can impact Internet speed as well.
Unfortunately for companies trying to keep up, sites with slower load times are ranked lower on Google due to the search engine's algorithm. It recently changed because mobile searches account for more than half of Google's searches in 10 different countries.
In essence, you either spend money to make your site faster, thus getting more hits, or you don't and it remains slow.
Websites are just like "freemium" games, you have to pay to win.
