How to speed up your website | Morse-Brown Design for Web & Print

Speeding up your website

13 July 2017

One of the (many) factors that Google takes into account when ranking your website is load speed - basically how fast your site loads in the browser when someone clicks on a link to it in Google. It's obvious really - Google is going to reward fast sites because that what every visitor wants - a site that appears really quickly after clicking on it (we're all getting more and more impatient these days...)

We've just had a lovely example of being able to really speed up one of our client's sites. When we designed and built the site, they continued with the hosting they had been using with their old site, which unfortunately turned out to be very slow. So we recommended moving to a different host.

We did a speed test before and after moving the site, so we could compare speeds, and this is what we found:

Time take to load the site with old hosts: 32 seconds
Time take to load the site with new hosts: 0.908 seconds!

RESULT! (Try it yourself).

If you'd like to accurately test the speed of your own site, try this speed test site (and choose Stockholm, Sweeden, if you're testing it from the UK). If it takes longer than 2 seconds to load, contact us for a massive speed boost...

< Back to News

Pigeon

A new and exciting product from Morse-Brown Design – head over to pigeonposted.com for more info. More

Printed 108 page course catalogue for Woodbrooke

Client: Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre No. of pages: 108 A 108 page printed course catalogue for Woodbrooke Following on from the successful rebrand and website design and build, we were… More

Parish share leaflets for Blackburn Diocese

Communicating complex information well – this is the role of good graphic design, and this is what we set out to do for Blackburn Diocese. Turning information into art – art to be read, absorbed and acted upon. Art to inspire, lead and guide. More

Valley House branding & web design and build

We were delighted to start work with Valley House, a multi-agency charity that had outgrown its old brand and website. Face to face meetings, in-depth research and a lot of design work has produced a contemporary new brand and responsive website for the organisation. More

Bringing research alive for
St Peter’s Saltley Trust

In-depth research into Christian discipleship and community engagement, brought alive by Morse-Brown Design with vivid illustrations, full-colour infographics, and a clear and engaging layout. More

Simple websites for small budgets

Think you don’t have the budget for a clean, professional looking website? Think again! We have helped many small organisations, from churches to charities to start-ups, create a beautifully designed, bespoke site to showcase their work to a wider public. More

Going to University Guide for Student Christian Movement

Another book designed, printed and published, together with full ISBN number, so it can be stocked and sold via Amazon or any other bookselling outlet. All part of the comprehensive book design and publishing service we provide. More

Flagship national weddings site web design and branding

The fouth, national website we’ve designed and built for the Church of England. A fully responsive, search-based site for anyone planning a CofE wedding. With a unique service walk-through, and a bespoke, stand-alone service planner. More

Woodbrooke rebrand

A contemporary new brand for Woodbrooke. Deliberately simple, and emphasising their warm and human style, as well as referencing growth, sustainability and longevity. More

Branding for the BBC

We were approached by the BBC to design new branding for their Leadership Programme, a new training course from the BBC Academy. A comprehensive brief and a lot of hard work resulted in a successfull delivery on a pretty tight deadline. More

Illustrating for the BBC

As well as web design, branding, and graphic design, we also provide bespoke illustrations in a wide variety of styles. This series was commissioned by the BBC for a studio directing exercise using virtual reality. One very satisfied client… More

Welcoming Students Guide

Another book published for Student Christian Movement – this time a resource for churches on making students feel welcome. The complete publishing package, with an ISBN number and a page on Amazon. More

New coffee-table magazine for Student Christian Movement

We were honoured to be asked to design and publish this student magazine, which has been around for almost 100 years, or 150 editions to be precise. And we’re still enjoying working on it 16 issues later… More

Branding for Blackburn Diocese: Vision 2026

We were delighted to have won the pitch to design new branding for Blackburn Diocese’s Vision 2026 programme of growth – a brand to unify communication and show the importance of growth across the whole diocese. More

Graphic design agency Birmingham wins Oxford Uni job

We’ve worked on a number of pieces for Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, including this MBNA end of course brochure. This adds to our other work for UK Business Schools. More

Rebranding a 100-year-old organisation

Rebranding an organisation that’s been around for a century is a little scary… But we succeeded, and the design has been really well received. We’ve incorporated it into a new magazine layout and lots of other printed material. More

Graphic designers Birmingham agency wins Warwick Business School brochure

Course brochures for one of the UK’s top business school, designed by Morse-Brown Design. Strong colours; a very simple and consistent layout, combined with a lot of white space. More

Brochure design –
when simple is best

When St Peter’s Saltley Trust came to us for a brochure, we designed them this little folder. At only 148 x 148mm and four pages, it’s cheap to produce, can be tailored to specific occasions, and it’ll be good for years to come. Job done. More

Holy Habits information pack
for the Methodist Church

Sometimes we develop simple brands during the course of other work. With this job, the West Midlands Methodist Circuit needed an identity for a new project that would visually tie in with the overall Methodist brand. More

Responsive web design Birmingham: Church of England:
National funerals website

Following our work on four CofE diocese websites, we were asked to pitch for the design and build of an information site for anyone organising a Church of England funeral. Here’s the result… More

Associated Architects heads-up mapping signage design

Based on a combination of Google Earth images, aerial photography, OS mapping and lots of bespoke 3D illustrations, we designed and illustrated this heads-up mapping signage system for the Kings School, Worcester. More

Web designers Birmingham – a responsive website for Restore UK

We love it when we get to work with organisations with values we really admire. Restore works with some of the most under-represented people in society, and we’re honoured to be able to help with both rebranding and with a new, responsive Wordpress website. More

Web design Birmingham-based agency wins national Church of England website

The pitch for the Church of England Funerals website included designs for a Christenings website, with similar aims. A site designed to be as accessible and engaging as possible, explaining everything you’d want to know about Christening your child in the Church of England. More

New responsive website design for Dovetail Greenhouses

Client: Dovetail Greenhouses dovetailgreenhouses.co.uk A new, responsive website for Dovetail Greenhouses Designing and building a new website for a company that relies, almost exclusively, on it’s web presence for it’s… More

Welcome packs for churches

Very few churches have anything nice to give to new-comers, to explain what they do and how their church works. This is our solution – a cost-effective and beautifully designed set of postcards, either in a folder with an introductory booklet, or displayed in the foyer. Or both. More

Together with God, by Ed Mackenzie & Gareth Crispin

We have the skills, experience and tools to provide a complete publishing package for any book, from design to actual fulfillment. This is the service we provided for Ed and Gareth when they approached us with their book idea, and it’s been very successful. More

Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham website design

A new website for the Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham, won after a three-way pitch. Our fourth Church of England Diocesesan website – as a friend remarked – you can’t work for a higher authority than that… More

Cambridge University handbook & alumni worldwide directory

We’ve designed a set of alumni worldwide directories, a volunteer handbook and material for a service award for Cambridge University. One of our prestigious higher education clients that we’re honoured to work for. More

New Thames Way identity,
brochure design & handbook

A brand, launch brochure and 52 page handbook for the newly instigated Thames Pilgrim Way, a pilgrimage route based on the Thames Path – the longest riverside walk in Europe. For the Church of England Diocese of Oxford. More

St Peter’s Saltley Trust;
identity design

A brand identity project for an educational charity working across the West Midlands region. An identity that needed to say ‘professional, intelligent and contemporary’, without being showy or clichéd in any way. More

Graphic design Birmingham: innovative exhibition display stands

Not only did we design the graphics for these stands, we designed (and built) the stands themselves. As there was nothing on the market that fitted the bill, we thought we’d have a go ourselves… More

Oxford Diocese:
Living Faith campaign brand

A five year campaign identity for Oxford Diocese. This has become such a strong brand for the Diocese that we were subsequently asked to base the design of their new website on the Living Faith colours. More

Silk Flowers making book;
design, print and distribution

One of our regular clients is a niche craft publisher of books on the subject of millinery. This is their latest book. The first book we published with them, Fabulous Fascinators, is now an Amazon best-seller with over 35 five star reviews. More

Oxford Food Bank report

A clean, uncluttered and contemporary design for a report of huge significance – the rise of food banks in Oxfordshire, one of the richest areas of the country. This was another job where the design included simple branding. More

Best Group Brochure

A clean, contemporary and professional brochure design, complimented with stunning images of car parks (yes, you can get stunning images of almost anything these days!) for a global financial company to advertise their new Car Park Fund. More

Cathedral campaign material, translated into 14 languages

A new, image-rich welcome brochure for Birmingham Cathedral. Our brief included modernisation of the cathedral’s identity, photography for the brochure, and the design and printing of a large, fixed exhibition stand for the cathedral foyer. More

High value commercial property brochure design and print

A commercial property brochure to showcase a large Cotswolds property. Using a combination of digitally cut-out commissioned watercolours and stunning stock photography of the area. Printed on luxurious board with a matt laminated cover. More

Large, networked database-driven, responsive website design

Most clients come to us with quite a firm idea of what they want from a website. But website projects don’t have to start like that. BCT came to us at the brainstorming stage, and in fact we came up with some of the original ideas behind this site. More

Responsive website design Birmingham, and ongoing SEO

We designed and built a new, responsive Wordpress website for Oaks Vets, and we now manage their search engine optimisation for them, getting them higher and higher on Google. More