Patience has never been one of my virtues, but today’s slow loading Web pages – especially blog home pages – would test the patience of Job.

As blogging has grown in popularity, so has it grown in complexity. Side bars have become salad bars. Badges, banners, buttons, and widgets, widgets everywhere. Recommendations, links, awards, events, comment displays, stat counters, ads, ads, and more ads. Page loading has slowed to a crawl.

Singing the Slow Page Loading Blues

Now, I’m not trying to monetize my blog particularly, so it’s easy for me to be a sidebar minimalist. However, I wonder how many readers abandon ambitiously monetized blogs due to impatience with loading time. Almost as troubling, slow loading provides a disincentive for leaving comments. Numerous times I’ve wanted to comment on an intriguing post but chose not to, simply because I didn’t want to wait 30 or 40 seconds for the authentication and page reload.

The Worst of Both Worlds

A truly lethal combination is slow loading pages and a partial RSS feed. Many readers don’t care for partial feeds to begin with. If readers know clicking through from the feed to the blog will entail a long wait, the instinctive reaction is “I’ll go the next feed and come back to this later.” And of course, later never comes.

Paths to Faster Loading

1. Programming. I’m no technical expert, but WordPress has caching system plugins to speed up page loading. Check it out.

2. Strategic. Here are some self-reflection questions worth asking. Why am I filling my blog with pay per click ads when I’m not yet near a critical mass of readers? Am I adding widgets because I think they will help me, or because they’re cool? Am I quick to add sidebar elements, but slow to evaluate their usefulness? Do I have a monetization plan, or am I throwing stuff on my blog and crossing my fingers?

3. Design. Here is an example of the kind of design choices we must ponder. I made a choice to put my blogroll on a separate page. It definitely has some downside – not as easy for readers to find links I consider valuable, and it doesn’t generate as much link juice for my favorite blogs as a sidebar blogroll would. On the other hand, on a separate page I can list as many links as I want without fear of creating a 15 foot long sidebar. I can (and plan to) add descriptions to my blogroll to entice readers to check out my favorite blogs. Was that the right decision? I don’t know, but if you think about your design options, you’re bound to end up with a more readable blog than if you pile up sidebar elements with no particular thought whatsoever.

Food for Thought

Remember John Belushi in Animal House, indiscriminately piling up mountains of food on his tray as he plowed through the cafeteria line? That’s no way to run a sidebar.

Profile in Courage

It can be done! Joanna Young recently did some soul searching after listening to reader feedback and cleaned up her sidebars. Bravo! Even though she scrapped my Word Nerd badge, I totally welcomed the change. Now I can enjoy her lively conversations without the wait. I’m sure it was tough for Joanna to let go of some of that sidebar stuff (after all, most of it does have value one way or another), but she did it. I don’t know what impact the change had on her traffic, but I’m guessing it hasn’t gone down.