@mytopagent:  In addition try image compression and resize them.  If you are using large image for thumbnails then change it.  Also, if you have too many videos,too many MP3 files, too many customization using codes for internet eliminiate them and eliminate clutter as @jasonwitt suggested.

Does Weebly load EVERYTHING on your page at once ... all your website pages or just the main page?

Thanks for your input. 
RE: SSL -> I'm keen to do this but reluctant to do so as I think it may cause issues like you mentioned. What issues are there? And how will this speed up my site or will it just give me better "SEO" juice (as they say)

Cloudflare: Does this make a difference? Is it easy to set up?  Could you email me??? john@mytopagent.co.nz 

The key part that's slowing my site down is the loading of my video from wistia.

John 

@jasonwitt  Real keen to know about this cloudflair it looks a good plus SSL idea you mentioned .... 

please let me know how you put it together and what issues you came accross. 

johnnymac22 is my skype ID

I used Cloudflare for several years for my Weebly site and it worked great by helping improve pagescore, pagespeed,  and acting as a CDN. Best part is Cloudflare is totally free and relatively easy to use. I never used Cloudflare for SSL, because that flexible SSL option is not really SSL, and your sitemap will be wrong because Weebly will generate HTTP instead of HTTPS sitelinks inside the sitemap.

Now that I have taken advantage of free SSL via Weebly I no longer use Cloudflare, because it creates a whole host of problems. The main problem is Cloudflare changes your IP address and Weebly will deactivate SSL when it detects your Cloudflare IP address. This in turn creates problems with Cloudflare which is expecting SSL.

Bottom line- if you want to enable SSL via Weebly then don't use Cloudflare. If you want to try Cloudflare it will definitely speed up your Weebly site, but don’t enable SSL at all via Weebly or Cloudflare.

Be aware that SSL (adds encryption) will slow down your site a little more, but Google is pushing SSL now and will even more in the future. If you have contact forms on your site you may notice the “Not Secured” notice that pops up when you begin to type anything in Chrome on those pages.

If you want total control of all aspects of your website then you should migrate to Wordpress. I have seriously considered it myself, but don’t want to spend days to recreate my site and don’t have time to manage a Wordpress site.

Regarding your video- I use YouTube and have it lazyload- meaning it doesn’t really load until someone clicks on it. If you want it to autoplay try just using embed code and YouTube- that way it is hosted by YouTube.  Zotobox is also slowing down your site. Your pics are also not compressed. You need to have your pics compressed and use fewer images. You homepage is loaded with stuff. It is going to be slow regardless. Being in New Zealand means a CDN like Cloudflare might really help. If this is a high revenue company I would seriously consider Wordpress.

@jasonwitt That was amasing feedback. 

I think I will give Cloudflare a go. I can always turn it off if it doesnt work. I'm hearing you on the Wordpress side its a major for me to change too...

With Cloudflare can I just use the free version? And is it hard to seet up? Do you know how to do this? I'd be happy to pay you to set this up for me??? 

And compression of images? Do I just go through one by one and compress them from say 400kb to 40kb which I've started to do ... a manual process... 

Please confrim. And again, thanks for all your help. You're a STAR!!!

If you don’t plan to use SSL I would definitely recommend giving Cloudflare a try- the paid version isn’t much better than the free version- so stick with the free option.

There are tons of videos on YouTube for setting up Cloudlflare and playing with the settings. As stated before I would leave SSL off- don’t even use the flexible version inside Cloudflare. Is your domain held via GoDaddy or another 3rd party or is it held via Weebly? You have to change your nameservers to Cloudflare namservers and I am not sure if you have control over nameservers if Weebly has your domain. After enabling Cloudflare be aware when you hit the Weebly publish button it will say it did not publish, but it really did. To see website changes you need to Purge cache inside Cloudflare. Also the Cloudflare Rocketloader setting (might want to turn that off) inside Cloudflare creates problems with Zotobox. Watch this video on setting up Cloudflare:

https://youtu.be/51PXQMDfcFs

Regarding images- it is just as important to resize as it is to compress. Don’t make the browser have to resize your image- that slows things down. Try this link below:

http://jpeg-optimizer.com/

FATASTIC! 

Knocked 1 sec off my load time. Thanks so much. I'll compress all my images too next. 

Do you know if I need to do ALL my pages? Or just the front page??

John

WOuld you recommened doing this? Wil it effect other apps on my site? I did a test with ZOTABOX and it seemed to run fine. Just woundeing what else it could cause issues too? @jasonwitt 

what a difference!!! So happy @jasonwitt i truned on Rocket Loader and Auto Mimify and all seems to be smoking along.

Cloudflare can definently help site spee, and has other useful features as well. You may even want to try the Cloudflare Argo feature for $5 plus bandwidth surcharge per month. Just remember that enabling SSL will cause major problems- I wish Weebly would fix this issue so I can go back to using Cloudflare myself. Weebly should work on partnering with Cloudflare to make an App that integrates everything.

I was just checking out Cloudflare for Weebly and came across your post. It's the best one of the bunch. Since I don't want to recreate my site either, I'm keeping it on Weebly. I've built websites for clients in Wordpress, but the ease of use for my site can't be beat. I also rank well for a whole host of other reasons besides speed; in particular, a fair number of reviews on Google My Business. Plus, most visitors don't access my site via mobile, so speed a bit less of an issue.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for saving me from the headache of adding Cloudflare.

-- Robbin

Thanks for posting, @Blockbeta

You can also use a website accelerator built on serverless architecture. This ensures that all assets of your website get accelerated on CDN, serverless storage and function compute. For example, check out kitsune-Nitro. Its a simple JS file that you need to add to your website.

As and when users open your website, the service workder identifies different sections of your website and moves them to a serverless stack. This ensurs that for the next user most of the content is accelerated.

Details - https://www.getkitsune.com/improve-website-performance-with-nitro

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@jasonwitt wrote:

Much of this simply can't be fixed when using a Weebly site. Sacrifices have to be made when using an easy sitebuilder. If your site does not use SSL (which is now free for all sites) then you can use Cloudflare to improve your numbers some. That being said when you go to enable SSL on Weebly then using Cloudflare will create all kinds of problems. If you want perfect Google scores you will have to go Wordpress. Understand that perfect Google scores are overrated and not required to rank well. Work on improving page loading speed by decluttering pages- that is most important for user experience and SEO.

Work on getting load time to 6 seconds or less:

https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-us

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"Understand that perfect Google scores are overrated and not required to rank well."

Eh? Where did you get this information from? Google runs the internet! So their scores are definitely not over-rated... Every single page I have read about ranking/seo says that google ranking factors are extremely important. And speed has a lot to do with this eg:

"A study by Akamai revealed these stats:

1. 40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to fully load.
2. 47% of end users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.

Site speed has been a ranking factor since 2010 and it’s good for users, too. If your load time is more than 2 seconds, which is the standard load time for sites, then you should take steps to improve it." (from Neil Patel site)