The speed of your website will be one of the major factors that play into its success. Whether you’re operating an eCommerce site or you’re creating a blog, visitors want pages that are fast to load.
And when it comes to mobile devices, speed is even more of a pressing issue. In fact, about 53% of people will abandon a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load on a mobile device.
That’s more than half of your customers!
Luckily, there are several things you can do that will speed up a website. While some of these may require a bit of programming knowledge, some can be done just by making a few changes in how you create content.
Regardless of how it’s done, putting effort into these measures to enhance the user experience of your site can impact visitor retention as well as search engine priority.
Thus, improving the website load speed is critical for success.
Why Website Speed is Vastly Important
Saying that the speed of your website is important is an understatement. In many cases, it is outright the most important aspect of your website.
For starters, it is not just users that like fast websites. Search engines, like Google, do too. In fact, Google has been fully transparent about speed. It is a confirmed factor that the search engine uses to rank your website.
Thus, if your website is slow it will not rank as high.
On top of this, speed is an important part of the user experience. Loading a page quickly can mean the difference in a visitor staying on your website. In most cases, if a website takes to long to load (over a second), they are going to think the website is unresponsive.
This has become a problem as technology has improved considerably. Users running SSDs want to make full use of them. If your website is what is hindering their experience, you just lost that user.
And this is a much bigger problem if you are running an eCommerce website. The extra time it takes to get to the cart is all the time it takes for the customer to change their mind. The faster your website loads, the better.
Best Methods to Add Website Speed
The following list of ways to improve your website’s speed range from simple to not-so-simple. However, they are surefire ways to improve your site’s performance. Keep in mind that every website is unique, thus results may vary.
The following are 12 things you can do that will help your site load up quicker on various devices. Committing to just one of these has the potential to increase viewership and improve the user experience.
1. Optimize Imagery to Speed Up the Website
Images are one of the more prominent sources for slow load time. High-resolution pictures can be incredibly large and take a great deal of time to render in the grand scheme of things.
When you upload a large 3000-pixel wide image and insert coding to reduce the image display to 150 pixels wide, browsers will still download that larger image and shrink it to fit the code.
A way to reduce the time it takes for computers and smartphones to download this image is to size it manually before uploading it to your website.
If you need a 150-pixel wide image on your site, you should create a 150-pixel wide image to upload.
You should also keep images in JPEG or PNG format. Things such as BMPs and TIFFs simply take up too much memory by being more complex. It’s always best to take the time to optimize images for use on the website.
2. Reduce Plugins
Plugins can take a great deal of effort to load, especially if your site is bogged down with them. While content management systems such as WordPress and Joomla utilize plugins for customization, there should be no need to install everything that looks “cool.”
Something you thought made your site look attractive may be hindering its performance.
Plugins can also include snippets of code that are placed into websites for other features. For example, the Twitter feed isn’t actually a plugin as the code is copy-and-pasted directly into any page on your website.
However, it will still contribute to load time as it’s pulling information from a server other than your own.
3. Clean-up Framework or Themes
A lot of slow websites suffer from inefficient coding. Sites that have been up for more than a decade are often slower than others because the code hasn’t been updated.
Styles and online coding has changed a great deal, and your site may be a victim of using outdated HTML practices.
Themes such as those used in WordPress and Joomla could also be the cause for a slow site. The same principle applies when considering how long your site has been in operation with the same theme.
If you want to speed up your website, you might want to ensure it’s using current coding practices. You may also want to consider changing to a new theme to give your website a makeover on top of a speed boost.
4. Using a Content Delivery Network
A content delivery network, or CDN, takes your persistent files and stores them on servers closest to your target audience.
Many hosting providers are offering this style of platform as it can vastly increase load times for your visitors. Cloudflare is among one of the more popular platforms and can easily be combined with other methods.
Things such as the CSS, images and some javascript are stored on these networks reducing their access times. For instance: If there is a CDN in Miami, your Florida visitors would have faster connections to the information.
5. Improve Website Speed by Optimizing the Homepage
You don’t want your homepage to be too busy. Showing 30 posts on the homepage reduces its speed. Many website owners take a more minimalist approach to design for the homepage and landing pages.
Removing Flash video content, reducing image use, reducing banners and only showing a few of the most common posts are some of the more common practices.
Many have adopted the philosophy of reducing scrolling on the homepage as well. What this means is that if visitors have to scroll too far to reach the bottom of the homepage, then there is too much.
This belief centers around keeping the site as basic as possible.
6. Consider Your Host’s Capabilities
Not all problems for speed can be fixed by changing coding or resizing images. In fact, your host could be playing a part in the efficiency of your website. If all else fails, you may need to find a host that has a better track record with accessibility.
You may also want to consider switching your site to a dedicated server instead of leaving your hosting provider. It’s often easier and you don’t have to switch companies if you like your current host.
For the most part, hosting accounts are stored on shared servers. This means the memory, CPU, drive usage and other contributing factors are being utilized by several websites at once.
A dedicated server may cost a bit more, but it will allow your site to use most of the resources available allowing it to essentially speed up the user experience.
Learn more about GreenGeeks’ Dedicated Server Packages.
7. Use Redirects as Little as Possible for Website Speed
Redirects can be quite beneficial when you are building a new site, revamping existing formats or simply moving to a new server. However, the redirect can also tap your load time.
Websites that have constructed mobile variants will often use redirects in the event a smartphone or tablet has been detected. Using HTTP redirects instead of JavaScript may help reduce the amount of time a site takes to send users to the correct style.
8. Browser Caching Affects Website Speed
Browser caching is a technique that improves the load speed for returning visitors by storing certain pieces of information in the browser. This ensures that when a visitor returns to your website, they are loading less.
To put it simply, the browser will store files that do not change often, which cuts down on load times. These include things like images, stylesheets, JavaScript files, and more.
Luckily it is very easy to do. All it takes is some slight modifications to the .htaccess file and you’re done. Alternatively, if you contact your web host, they would also be able to help.
9. Switch to Asynchronous Loading
By default, CSS and JavaScript files are loaded synchronously, which means they are loaded one at a time. Switching to asynchronous can help speed up your website.
If you have a very large file on a page, it can reduce loading speeds. This is because the website must load that file before moving on. Essentially, it’s like being on a one-lane highway and having a slow car in front of you.
However, in an asynchronous setting, you can load that big element while also loading the other smaller ones. Keeping with our highway analogy, this is like introducing another two lanes that allow quicker cars to go around the slow one.
Thus, making the switch to asynchronous will definitely result is fast loading.
10. Utilize Lazy Loading For Images
Images and media files need to be optimized to load faster on WordPress, but what if you didn’t need to load them until you need them?
That is exactly what lazy loading is. If the piece of media (image, GIF, video) is not within view of the user when loading the page, it is an unnecessary thing to do. This technique only loads media when it is necessary for use.
And if your website utilizes a lot of media files, this is a must-have. Loading an image-rich page can be one of the worst experiences if loaded normally.
To add this feature to WordPress, I recommend using the Lazy Load plugin. You can also enable lazy loading through the Jetpack plugin.
Keep in mind that many other plugins have this feature, so make sure to check your gallery related plugins for the option
11. Disable or Adjust Gravatar Settings
WordPress fully supports Gravatar images in the comment section. This lets visitors add a little more personality into their comments. They can add a picture of themself, their favorite character in fiction, or just about anything.
However, all of these are images that need to load.
While the impact is extremely minor in a small feed, it can become a serious issue for larger comment sections. Loading hundreds of Gravatar images can slow down your pages. You can disable this option entirely inside of WordPress or limit the number of comments that appear at once.
12. Turn Off Trackbacks and Pingbacks
When starting out, trackbacks and pingbacks are exciting. Another website has mentioned you and that can help you build traffic. However, it is adding a notification to your website and updates the information within that post.
While this is harmless when starting out, receiving a few every day can end up impacting your website’s speed. This is one reason why larger websites turn off trackbacks and pingbacks.
Keep in mind that turning these off does not get rid of all of the links to your website. Those remain and websites are still able to link to you. What it does is stop the notifications from building up and prevents updating post data needlessly.
After all, there are plenty of other things WordPress can be doing.
Keep Your Site Fast
In an age where the competition among websites is extremely high, you need to take every measure you can to create an impact on your target audience. Although content is king, speed is a must-have attribute.
Not having it can make you lose visitors, sales, and create a terrible user experience.
Do what you can to speed up your website for both visitors and search engines alike. In the fast-paced environment of the Internet, every second counts.
Which tips helped you speed up your website? Have you noticed more traffic since improving the speed of your website?
