Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
I have used the OnlyWire button on many websites over the last few years.
I have now removed it.
The reason was because I was having very slow load times, on this blog and some others. All had the OnlyWire button.
When the button was removed the load-time problems diaappeared. I’m not talking milliseconds either. The OnlyWire button was, in my opinion adding 5 or more seconds to page load time.
That kind of slow loading will kill your traffic. People won’t wait.
So Adios OnlyWire.
I have other gripes about OnlyWire that had let me to stop using it for bookmarking a while back.
The company has introduced lots of hoops for users to jump through. I guess they don’t want people using it. Aside from the load-time issue they just made it hard to use by trying to bully users into using the OnlyWire Firefox plugin (which means you have to use Firefox). They did a couple other lame things too. Phmeh!
Instead I’ve put “Sociable” buttons on this blog. We’ll see how that goes.
As far as bookmarking, I prefer the results I get running a desktop software. The problem with services like OnlyWire is you have to login and confirm a bunch of bookmarks all the time. With the desktop software confirmation and posting are handled at the same time. The one I use and recommend is SocialBot
The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.
Interesting post Loren, I myself use onlywhire and it never even occurred to me that my slow load time could be caused by onlywhire. I also dont like the fact that you have to follow up with bookmarks and login to manually finish the bookmark process, which begs the question of whats the points of using onlywhire as an “automation bookmarking tool”. But, I have been using it for a long time since I couldn’t find anything decent that does a better job.
Thanks for the information loren, I am going to remove it and maybe take your advice and use the socialbot plugin. Thanks again.
I’ve done some reading on it and a lot of people have had trouble with OnlyWire lately.
Mostly, I thought it was users, those who bookmark with it. I stopped doing that a while ago due to the inconvenience of having to log in coupled with the fact that the OnlyWire toolbar doesn’t work with my favorite browser (SeaMonkey). I put all my personal bookmarks in De.li.cio.us using a Seamonkey plugin, but for marketing my sites and blogs posts and articles and things I want to bookmark a whole bunch of sites.
I admit that having the OnlyWire button on the site encourages people to use it, but I was looking at a heavy-duty bounce-rate (people who only look at one page and then leave) and surmised that visitors were clicking away before the page even loaded. I was surprised the OnlyWire button was the culprit, but I experienced massive improvements in load time for sites I removed the button from.
There are a couple of other “one for all” bookmarking button things out there. They all, presumably, make you go back and confirm. The issue is the Captcha forms. With SocialBot the confirmation is taken care of right there on the spot. It takes a few minutes to bookmark 50-100 sites.
Hmm, I never knew that there was a social bookmarking software that allowed you to bookmark without having to confirm every single bookmark.
Never used it before, but definitely will not now. Thanks for the heads up.
Sorry that you ran into issues with the Button. We have actually made some major changes recently and this type of slowdown should not be occurring. Additionally, the latest OnlyWire Submitter does not require Firefox… it works outside of the web browser.
If you put the Button back on a private inside page of your site and send me the link, I’ll investigate why it’s acting slow on your site. Hope you’re respond… we’ll work out a solution.
Regards,
Craig @ OnlyWire
Hi Loren
I have used OnlyWire in the past…. I didn’t like all the captcha’s and a lot of the bookmarks didn’t take so I stopped using OnlyWire. I will definitely check out Socialbot. Thanks for the interesting read!