Hi
Just wanted to know if use of icons within the Site Origin Page Builder slows page speed. In particular there are some articles on the web referring to other page builders using Font Awesome icons, which are loaded into the the WordPress Database causing slow performance and impacting Google speed rankings (apparently this is irresolvable once use of Font Awesome has been activated). Is anybody aware of such page speed issues with the Site Origin Page Builder and the icon library available? Not sure if others have experienced this problem?
Whilst icons make the website a more user friendly experience, I am a bit reluctant to use these for the above reasons. However not sure if this is an issue with the Site Origin Page Builder.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks
Hi Ali,
Font Awesome will add two additional requests (one stylesheet and the Font Awesome font) to your page and 90 to 200 KB – the exact amount is dependent on the user’s browser as different versions of Font Awesome are loaded based on what the user’s browser supports. Regardless of how many icons you use, the number of requests and file size don’t change – you could display a thousand icons and you would still only need those two requests. The two requests are a one time cost as the user’s browser will cache both the stylesheet and the Font Awesome Font.
With most hosting providers, Font Aweomse will add a negligible performance impact so there’s really no need to worry about using Font Awesome unless your website is on an underpowered server or your website is already very slow (in which case, it’s best not to add to it). Google will see you’re using Font Awesome but unless your website is already slow, it won’t have a noticeable impact.
Hi Alex
Thanks for the detailed response. I think that makes sense. However what about Google Fonts? Again there seems to be a lot of noise on web forums about Google Fonts impacting page speed. What is your take on this in relation to the Site Origin Page Builder? Would be grateful if you could clarify this also.
Thanks
Ali
Hi Ali,
Google Fonts employees a large amount of caching so like with Font Awesome, the cost is a one time hit per font you use. Due to how Google Fonts works, the user won’t experience any performance impact if they’ve visited another site that’s used the same Google Font. This is because the user will still have that font cached.
The purely cyclical side of me (and nothing I can actually verify) says that Google won’t punish you for using a Google product as long as you don’t go overboard with how many fonts you use on each page (don’t use 4 different Google Fonts on a single page). It should be noted that performance testing tools always test the page load time as if there is no browser cache and the user is loading the page the first time so it’s not always a true example of what the average user will actually experience – it could be significantly better or in some cases, even worse (in those cases though, they’re typically out of your hands).
Does that make sense?
Hi Alex
Thats absolutely makes sense. Thanks for the detailed response again!
Hi Ali,
Great to hear. Happy I could help! :)
Please be sure to post another thread if you have any other questions.