It’s important to understand that you won’t get a second opportunity in user experience.
Low website speed is one of the most frustrating things that will divert the audience from your contacts.
Website speed optimization is high in performance that results in increased return visits, lower bounce rates, higher conversions, engagement, higher ranks in organic search, and better user experience.
Slow websites will cost you money and harm your reputation. You will positively impact marketing and sales processes by reducing the page load time.
What is page speed?
Page speed is a measurement of how quickly the content or pages on your website load.
Page speed is often mistaken with “site speed,” which is the page speed for a sample of page views on a site.
Page speed can be described in either “page load time” (the time it takes to display the content on a specific page fully) or “time to first byte” (how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the webserver).
Importance of website speed optimization
Page load time is a web performance measurement that shows the time required for a page to display on the user screen.
Let’s take a look at how website speed optimization affects the critical factors of website success:
- Conversion. Website conversion is an essential factor in your company success, which implies getting your visitors to do what you want them to do. For example, they will buy your stuff, subscribe to newsletters, register for a webinar, or download a guide. According to the Hubspot research, the 1-second pause means a 7 percent drop in conversions. For example, a page slowdown of 1 second could cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales each year.
- Visibility. The load time of your website also affects how smoothly users can discover your website. Website speed is one factor that Google takes care of when ranking sites. A low performing website has a poor user experience and, as a result, gains less promotion in search results.
- Usability. Website usability, like page speed, load time, and website responsiveness to user requests, directly influences customer commitment. The better your website serves, the more satisfied a user will be. A great user experience is a way for creating a large customer base and a powerful brand.
How to perform website speed optimization
1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network is a set of web servers spread across different geographical areas that deliver web content to end-users concerning their location.
When you host the website on a single server, all users requests are sent to the same hardware. For this reason, the time needed to process each request increases.
On top of that, the load time increases when users are physically far from the server. With CDN, user requests are redirected to the nearest server. As a result, the content is delivered to a user quicker, and a website works faster.
2. Enable compression
Gzip is a software application for file compression, reduces the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files larger than 150 bytes.
Please do not use it on image files. Instead, compress these in a program like Photoshop or any online compressor tool, where you can control the quality of the image.
3. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Designing your website with page builders and updating creates unnecessary codes. By optimizing your code (including removing spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters), you can dramatically boost your page speed.
4. Move your website to a better host
The most popular type of hosting that is used all over the world is sharing hosting. That’s the most affordable way to get your site online in a quick time and for a low fee.
It’s important to select a fast web host to guarantee better optimization. With shared hosting, you share CPU, disk space, and RAM with other sites using too.
5. Optimize images
Everyone loves eye-catching images. Be sure that your photos are no larger than they need to be and in the proper file format. Use next-gen images to serve your users (Webp are generally better for graphics).
You can use any online converter tool. The procedure may take a bit of time, but it’s worth it.
6. Reduce the number of plugins
Plugins are standard components of each website. They add specific features suggested by third parties.
Unfortunately, the more plugins are installed, the more resources are needed to run them.
As a result, the website works slower, and security issues can appear. As time passes, plugins grow, while some are not used anymore.
We recommend checking out all the plugins you have installed and deleting unnecessary ones. First, run the performance tests on your page to discover which plugins are slowing down your website.
The website speed depends not only on the number of installed plugins but also on their quality.
7. Use leverage browser caching
There are a lot of users accessing your webpage at one time. Servers work slowly and need more time to deliver the web page to each user.
Caching is the process of storing the current version of your website on the hosting and delivering this version until your website is updated. It means that the web page doesn’t repeatedly render for each user. And thus, your website loads faster each time.
8. Improve server response time
Your server response time is impacted by the quantity of traffic you receive, the resources each page uses, the software your server uses, and the hosting provider you use.
To improve your server response time, look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them.
The optimal server response time is under 200ms.
9. Remove render-blocking JavaScript
Browsers have to build a DOM tree by parsing HTML before rendering a page. If your browser encounters a script during this process, it has to stop and execute it before continuing.
10. Reduce redirects
Website redirects create additional HTTP requests, which negatively impact performance. We advise keeping them to a minimum or eliminating them. First, you should identify all redirects on your page by running a site scan.
11. Detect 404 errors
A 404 error means that a “Page isn’t found”. This message is delivered by the hosting to browsers or search engines when the accessed content of a page no longer exists.
To detect and correct a 404 error, you can use error detection tools and plugins.
12. Reduce the use of web fonts
Web fonts have become very popular in website design. Unfortunately, the use of web fonts harms the speed of page rendering. Web fonts add extra HTTP requests to external resources.
