Social Share Buttons That Slow Every Page

A row of small icons

Along the side of each page, or under every heading, sits a row of small icons: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and a plus sign offering a dozen more networks.

They arrived with the theme or with a plugin, and they appear everywhere: the home page, every service, the privacy policy, the contact page, the quote form.

They look like a few small images. They are not. Each official button is a piece of software loaded from the network that made it.

On a phone with a weak signal, that software is part of what the visitor waits for.

What each button loads

An official like or share button is usually a script from the network's own servers. The script then builds the button inside a frame, which loads files of its own.

Some buttons also ask the network how many times the page has been shared, so they can display a count beside the icon.

A row of four buttons can mean many extra requests to several different companies' servers, each needing its own connection before anything arrives.

All-in-one sharing plugins add another layer: a script of their own, which then loads the networks' scripts, often with tracking added.

What that costs on a phone

• More requests before the page finishes loading.
• New connections to servers the page never otherwise uses.
• Script to run on a phone's slower processor.
• Text that jumps as the buttons arrive and push it down.
• Floating bars that cover words on a narrow screen.
• Information sent to each network about every visit.

The third is the one office tests miss. A desktop computer runs the scripts in a moment, while a modest phone takes longer, and the page may ignore taps while it works.

Pages nobody shares

Sharing happens on some pages and not others. People pass on an article that helped them, an event, a sale, or a photograph of finished work.

Nobody shares a page about drain repair, a privacy policy or a quote form. Yet those pages carry the same buttons and pay the same price in speed.

The pages most likely to be opened on a phone in a hurry, such as contact and services, are where the buttons do the most harm and the least good.

The counter that says zero

Buttons with counters carry a second cost. A page showing zero shares tells every visitor that nobody found it worth passing on.

On a small business site, most pages show zero, or a single digit that has not moved in years. The counter meant as social proof works in reverse.

Switching counters off removes the problem, and one more request to each network with it.

Plain links do the same job

Every major network accepts a simple link that opens its own sharing window with the page address filled in. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest all work this way.

A plain link loads nothing from the network until someone taps it. The icon can be a small image stored on your own site, or a few lines of code that draw it.

The visitor who wants to share gets the same result. The visitor who does not, which is nearly everyone, pays nothing for it.

On phones there is often a better option still: the share button built into the browser and the phone, which visitors already know how to use.

A worked example

A foundation repair company with three crews had a site built on a purchased theme that put a floating share bar on every page, with five networks and a share counter.

Its pages covered crack repair, underpinning, drainage and waterproofing, plus a blog with a handful of seasonal articles and a quote form asking for photographs of the problem.

Nobody shared the service pages. Each still loaded five networks' scripts, and on a phone the bar covered the left edge of the text while every counter read zero.

A test on a simulated phone connection listed requests to social networks among the slowest items on the quote page, which had nothing on it anyone would share.

The bar came off every page. Blog posts got a line of plain share links for Facebook and Twitter at the end of each article, with no counter.

The quote form now loads nothing from any social network, and the company's own Facebook page is linked once, in the footer.

Find out whether anyone clicks

Analytics already holds a rough answer. The referrals report shows how many visits arrived from Facebook, Twitter and the rest, and on which pages they landed.

If a network sends a handful of visits a year, its button is not earning a place on every page. If one article brings regular visits from Facebook, that article is where a share link belongs.

Once plain links replace the official buttons, each click can be recorded as an event, so next year's decision rests on numbers rather than habit.

Follow links and embedded feeds

Icons that link to your own Facebook or Instagram page are usually plain links already, and cost almost nothing. Keep them, in the header or the footer.

Embedded feeds are another matter. A box showing your latest posts loads a great deal from the network on every page it appears on, for content most visitors scroll past.

If a feed earns its keep, give it one page rather than the sidebar of every page.

The counter-case

Some sites live on sharing. A blog, a recipe site, an events listing or a shop whose products people show their friends may get real visits from shared links.

For them the buttons belong on the pages people share, and the right choice is still the lightest version that works, placed after the content rather than floating over it.

For most service businesses, though: take the buttons off the pages nobody shares, and use plain links where sharing actually happens.

Clearing the buttons

1. Open your site on a phone, on mobile data.
2. List every page carrying share buttons.
3. Check the referrals report for each network.
4. Remove the buttons from service and contact pages.
5. Replace the rest with plain share links.
6. Turn off share counters everywhere.
7. Run the speed test again afterwards.

Step four matters most, because service and contact pages are the ones people open on a phone when they are close to calling, and every script removed there is one less thing between them and the number.

Running that test and reading the results is covered in the mobile speed test most owners have never run.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.