Website speed is as critical as any other element in navigating the digital world. Imagine clicking on a website and waiting for more than a few minutes for it to load completely. The most likely thing for anyone to do is simply shut the page and never give it another thought.
This results in higher bounce rates, which will signal to the search engine that this site is not providing a good user experience. This will further lead to lower search rankings and fewer chances for user interactions.
This is why the speed of the site raises a great concern among SEOs. Moreover, who would not appreciate a site that opens in seconds?
So, here we are presenting to you the website speed optimization strategies that you can use to make your site better.
But before we head to the strategies, let’s understand the concept of website speed optimization.
What is Website Speed Optimization?
Website speed optimization is the set of measures, methods, and actions that aim at improving page speed. This ranges from configuring the server and optimising the codes to optimising image sizes, among others. The aim is to deliver a faster and quicker site loading experience, where the time spent by the visitors waiting for the pages is as short as possible.
The aspect of website speed cannot be overemphasised, as it has been known to bring a good amount of changes in the standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
For instance, a website that takes only one second to load is reported to have a conversion rate thrice as that of a site that takes 5 seconds to load. The greater the load time, the lesser the conversion rate, which proves that there is a direct impact of speed on business online success rates.
Source: Portent
The above graph is the example we have represented.
Now that we have a clear understanding of what website speed optimization is and why it is needed. Let’s discover the strategies to enhance your website speed.
How to Optimise Your Website Speed?
We are now heading to the strategies that will help us deliver a seamless user experience. It will help to stay ahead in this competitive world, as the faster load times will also result in good search engine rankings and higher conversion rates.
- Conduct a Comprehensive Site Audit
In general, it is always beneficial to begin with the overall site review before heading to fixes. You can think of the audit as a periodic check-up for your site or even possibly yearly.
Applications such as Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix are very useful when it comes to providing an overall idea of the performance of the website but that is not where it ends.
Source: Ventura
You can personally check how your site loads on the devices as well as on the different connection types to get the complete idea. This way you get to learn areas that may slow down the workflow, such as slow server response or big images that may require optimization.
- Focus on High-Impact Fixes First
Let’s face it: some changes will result in a significantly higher increase in speed as compared to others. That is why we need to learn and prioritise the important repairs that could have a higher impact on our site speed before anything else.
For instance, if your server is slow, a simple solution such as switching to a new hosting plan will help improve the situation. The concept here is, to begin with the fixes that’ll get you the best chance and, within no time, transform your site into a rocket ready to skyshoot.
- Evaluate and Upgrade Your Hosting Solution
This implies that the speed of your website is dictated by the kind of hosting service you have for your web business. When you opt for shared hosting, you are most likely using the resources that are being provided to hundreds of other websites, which greatly decreases the speed of the site.
You can upgrade to the Virtual Private Server (VPS) or even the dedicated server, where you will have much more control and efficiency. VPS is the concept of having a larger piece of the server pie; whereas, dedicated hosting means having the pie all to yourself.
This says that when your website is established, it can be helpful to upgrade your hosting to make sure that the site’s working is not slowed down which could result in users’ frustration.
- Implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Have you ever thought to yourself what makes some sites load incredibly fast regardless of the actual location? If not, then let us inform you that it is a content delivery service, more commonly known as CDN or Content Delivery Network.
This is analogous to having servers all over the world that work together in tandem with the main server to deliver your content as fast as possible.
Source: Gravity
As the name implies, a CDN carefully stores these servers’ images, scripts, and other static contents. This way, your website will load swiftly in New York, Tokyo, or any part of the globe. It can be very important for worldwide websites and assist in reducing the quantity of time it will take to pack so that websites are capable of processing large amounts of data traffic.
- Optimise and Compress Images
Usually, images are the major contributors to the slow loading of websites or the web pages that contain them. But don’t worry—optimising them doesn’t mean that the quality of such items will be compromised as well.
To optimise images, begin by resizing your images to target sizes for the website you are working on. Then, compress them using tools such as TinyPNG or ImageOptim, which make these images smaller in size but with no compromise in quality.
Source: TinyPNG
- Minimise Redirects
‘Redirect’ is a process where the user and search engines are guided from one URL to another. This is common in pages that have been moved or updated. While they have been helpful for most parts.
Redirects are helpful for the most part, like maintaining traffic flow—yet they can become a hindrance once they accumulate and slow down a website. Each redirect takes additional time to load and although the time may only be a second or two, this can be very irritating to users.
To optimise your site, the best thing that you must do is to scrutinise your redirects and delete the unneeded ones. If you have to use them, keep them as straightforward as possible. By minimising redirects, you will have a faster-loading site and this will lead to more users landing on your side.
- Reduce the Number of HTTP Requests
Each item on the page, be it an image, script, or stylesheet, needs an HTTP request to be loaded into the page. As the number of elements increases, the number of requests increases, thus decreasing the speed of the site.
For instance, you can merge all the CSS files into one or work with CSS sprites, meaning that you can join several images into one image. Let’s not exclude browser caching from the list of ways to make a website work faster. By caching files in clients’ devices, one can reduce repeated requests and increase load speed, especially for repeat visitors.
- Compress Files
The more compact you make your file, the less bulky it becomes, making it easier to transport. However, one can reduce the size of files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so that they load much faster.
Gzip is considered the most effective, widely used method for compressing file sizes. This way, they take less time to load.
Source: Medium
- Leverage Browser Caching
Browser caching is a technique whereby the server saves some elements of your website on a user’s device. It means that the web pages do not have to be downloaded afresh each time the user visits. For optimum caching benefit, it is best to set the correct cache expiry for the various content types.
Static elements such as images can have an expiration of several months, while other dynamic contents should have one spanning not more than a week. It is one of the essential optimization techniques that must be configured properly to make returning visitors’ experience frictionless.
- Regularly Monitor and Fix ‘404’ Errors
A ‘404’ error says that you need to visit the page again, sometime later, as it is not found currently. They annoy users and can be the reason for your site’s decreased loading speed.
These errors must be periodically searched by using programs like ‘Google Search Console’ to prevent broken links from appearing. Professionally examining and correcting these mistakes entails that your site remains well-oiled and functional.
- JavaScript and CSS Files
JavaScript is the powerhouse of any website and CSS provides your website with its looks. But if there are too many or are placed in several files, they may cause quite a number of inconveniences.
This can help to reduce the loading time is to have one or two files as a whole, instead of many, and then to remove any unnecessary spaces or comments from the code.
Various web development programming languages like JavaScript, HTML, Python, etc and Techs like UglifyJS for the JS or CSSNano for CSS are available for particular purposes, thus making it easy to alleviate your code for better performance.
Conclusion (Website Speed Optimization Strategies)
Website speed optimization is not just a one-time task, it is a commitment to keep the site running smoothly all the time. By not neglecting the website speed optimization, you are taking a vital step toward making sure that there is good business growth. There are over a million sites on the web, but the winner is the one that fulfils the users’ demand. For example, the demand for faster loading and efficient websites.
By staying proactive in incorporating these strategies, you are not only improving the current user experience and search engine ranking. But you are also setting a new stage for future innovations. Do not refrain from adapting to technological advancements and user expectations.
When you start to understand and take action on them, you are investing in a future where your website is ahead of the competition. So, get ready to touch new heights of success by meeting the requirements of the digital world.