Weekly Links Roundup – Calendar Plugins, Slow Load Time, User Switching

This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Looking for a calendar plugin? You’ll find a lot of them in the WordPress plugin repository… to help make sense of the offerings check out this review of the Six Best Event Calendar Plugins for WordPress. I’m a fan of The Events Calendar, although it is definitely not a lightweight plugin, but if you need Google maps and a large amount of info for your events presented nicely without a lot of work on your part, it’s a good option.

Research shows that over 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes over 3 seconds to load. Yikes! If you’re running an ecommerce site, this can be a hard time limit to beat when your site gets more popular. Learn how to improve slow load times on your ecommerce site.

Did you know that a 1 second increase in page loading time can result in a 7% decrease in site conversions? Again, yikes! Here’s an infographic on how slow load times may impact your company’s bottom line.

Finally…

Here’s a handy thing if you’re testing or troubleshooting issues on a complex site: user switching. Learn how to quickly switch user accounts (if you’re a site admin, or MU super-admin) and see your site from the viewpoint of a subscriber or other lower-level user.