Website Speed Enhancement
You can create a great first impression about your company by speeding up your website. It should be kept in mind that when it comes to user experience, you get no second chances. One of the most irritating things that will steer people away from your site is slow loading speeds.
The benefits of an optimized, well-performing site are return visits, low bounce rates, more conversions, engagement, higher organic search rankings, and a better user experience. You will hurt your revenue and your reputation if your website is slow. You will have a favourable impact on marketing and sales processes by lowering page load time. You’ll attract more visitors who can be converted into customers as a result of increased traffic. This guide will provide you with tips on how to increase your website’s performance and page load time in this article.
The significance of website speed optimization
The time it takes for a page to load on a user’s screen is referred to as page loading time. Let’s look at how website performance optimization affects the most important aspects of website success:
- conversion
- visibility
- usability
Conversion – Conversion, or getting your visitors to do what you want them to do, is a key aspect of your business’s success. For example, customers purchasing your product, signing up for newsletter campaigns, attending a webinar, or downloading a guide.
The faster is the page loading speed, the more conversion you can achieve. According to research, a one-second wait results in a 7% drop in conversions. A one-second page lag, for example, could lose Amazon $1.6 billion in annual sales.
Visibility – The time it takes for your website to load has an impact on how easy users can access it. One of the variables considered by Google while ranking websites is website speed. A badly performing website has a negative experience on users and, as a result, receives less search engine optimization. Google has begun prioritising results based on mobile versions of pages, even for desktop queries, since December 2017. The purpose of this decision is to safeguard visitors from websites that are slow to load and aren’t mobile-friendly.
Usability – Customer loyalty is influenced directly by website usability factors like page speed, load time, and responsiveness to user demands. A user will be more impressed with your website if it works well without any issues. A strong brand and a huge client base can be built through a positive user experience.
How to speed up your website
After you’ve tested your website’s speed, you can begin optimizing it. There are numerous techniques to make your website operate faster, and we’ve compiled a list of the most effective ones.
1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers that are located in several regions all around the world that deliver web content to end-users regardless of their location. All the questions or queries of the users are sent to the same hardware when the website is hosted on a single server. As a result, the time taken to process each request increases. Using a CDN, user requests are forwarded to the nearest server. Due to this, the content can be accessed by users more quickly, and websites operate more efficiently. This method is expensive but at the same time, it is a very effective, method of reducing load time.
2. Switch to a better host for your website
There are three possible types of hosting:
- Shared hosting
- Virtual Private Servers (VPS) hosting
- Dedicated server
Sharing hosting is the most common type of hosting utilised all over the world. It is the most common, cost-effective option to have your site up and running in a very short period. To ensure optimal optimization, it’s critical to select a fast web host. In the case of shared hosting, your CPU, disk drive, and RAM are shared with other websites which are on the same server. This is why shared hosting is slower than VPS or dedicated hosting and is not much recommended.
Dedicated servers and virtual private servers are a lot faster than the previous option. VPS utilizes numerous servers for the sake of content delivery. With a VPS, you share the server with other users but have your virtual server with your specifications that do not affect other clients. VPS will be a great choice for you if your website gets traffic regularly or if you have an eCommerce site with traffic spikes at certain times.
Using a dedicated server, which can be your own physical server, is the most expensive hosting option. You pay a server rent and hire a system administrator to maintain it in this situation.
Renting dedicated cloud resources from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, or other public cloud providers is another approach. Both approaches can be merged to create a hybrid cloud. With dedicated servers, the resources are all yours, and you have complete control over them. Under a variety of packages, cloud infrastructures can enable unlimited and on-demand scalability.
Another alternative is serverless architecture, which eliminates the need for server maintenance and setup.
3. Optimize the size of your website’s photos
Everyone likes visually appealing images. Images are very important for the success of eCommerce businesses. They use a lot of photos, images, and graphics on the product pages to increase engagement. The disadvantage here is that images are large files that may cause a website to load slowly.
Compressing photos with tools like ImageOptim, JPEGmini, or Kraken is the best option to minimise image size without reducing quality. The technique may take some time, but it is well worth the effort. The HTML responsive images secret> and size> attributes, which modify image size according to user display parameters, are another technique to decrease picture size.
4. Reduce the number of plugins
Plugins are a standard part of every website. They include third-party-recommended features. Unfortunately, the more plugins you use on your website, the more resources you’ll need to keep them running. As a result, the website will take more time to load, and security issues may arise. Remove all the plugins that are not necessary. To begin, run performance tests on your page to determine which plugins are causing your website to slow down. The number of installed plugins, as well as their quality, affect the website’s speed. Avoid plugins that make a lot of database queries or load a lot of scripts and styles. The simplest approach is to keep only the ones that are necessary and to keep them updated.
5. The number of JavaScript and CSS files should be reduced
If your website has a lot of JavaScript and CSS files, it will result in a lot of HTTP requests from visitors who wish to access specific files. These requests are handled separately by each visitor’s browser, slowing down the website’s operation. Your website will surely speed up if you reduce the quantity of JavaScript and CSS files. Attempt to integrate all JavaScript and CSS files into a single file. The total number of HTTP requests will be reduced as a result of this. With the help of various tools available on the internet, you can quickly minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. You can use WillPeavy, Script Minifier, or Grunt, for example.
6. Database optimization in CMS
The most efficient technique to improve performance is to optimise the database. The database size grows when you utilise a content management system (CMS) with complicated plugins, and your website becomes slower. For example, the WordPress CMS keeps a lot of data in the form of comments, blog articles, and other information. Each CMS has its own set of optimization measures as well as a set of plugins. WP-Optimize, for example, is a good option for WordPress.
7. Reduce redirects
Additional HTTP requests are generated by website redirects, which has a detrimental influence on performance. It is recommended to keep them to a bare minimum or eliminate them. To begin, conduct a site scan to detect all redirects on your page. Then you must determine whether they are necessary and just keep the important ones.
Conclusion
An average user expects a website to load in less than 3 seconds. If your website fails to do so, you will lose internet traffic and, as a result, revenue.
So, it is suggested that a basic yet efficient website performance optimization strategy be used. Examine and keep track of the most important aspects of website success, such as conversion, visibility, and usability. In terms of these three elements, test your current website speed and prioritize the pages and features that require the most attention. Start with the difficult and complex parts of your optimization and concentrate on the pages that will benefit you the most.
Website Speed Testing Tools: