Website speed optimization has the potential to make or break your website. Whether it is an e-commerce, blogging, or any website you own, its performance speed can highly impact your ROI, which is the top concern for people regarding their digital assets. Studies reveal that every 1 second delay in page load decreases customer satisfaction by 16 percent, page views by 11 percent, and conversion rates by 7%.
If you are a beginner and want to enhance your website performance speed, this comprehensive guide is for you. Within this guide you’ll discover how to:
Apply strategies to streamline your website’s speed.
Get tangible improvements in user experience and engagement.
Analyze the measurable impact on conversion rates and overall business growth.
First things first, let’s get a clear understanding of what website speed optimization is!
WHAT IS WEBSITE SPEED OPTIMIZATION?
Website speed refers to the total time taken to display content from a website server to the requested web browser (Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc).
When a visitor visits a website, and clicks a link or any other source to get any kind of website’s content displayed, the overall loading and displaying time of that content is your website’s speed.
Engineers at Google have discovered that the barely perceptible page load time of 0.4 seconds is long enough to cause users to bounce. The ultimate tip to enhance user experience and your site’s image is to turn your focus toward its speed optimization.
It includes:
- Identifying the problem using PageSpeed Insights.
- Deal with all the queries promptly.
- Limit the number of requests you serve at a time.
- Reducing the load on your server.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT WEBSITE SPEED OPTIMIZATION?
Here’s a list of 7 steps that you can take to improve your website’s speed and let the visitors enjoy a smooth user experience.
1. OPTIMIZE IMAGE FILES
First and foremost, optimizing all the image files of your website is highly important. The reason is that it highly impacts a website’s loading time because all files vary in size. Larger and bulk files tend to take more time to load as compared to smaller files. You use the below-mentioned strategies to optimize all the image files of your website without compromising its quality and visual appeal.
- Choose a format: use JPGs or WEBPs for a high-quality image with a suitable load time. PNG and GIF formats can also be used.
- Select a proper size: Use browser resizing capabilities to make images responsive. It can be done by setting fixed width and auto-height instructions.
- Compress the images: every image format can be compressed to a specific size without compromising on the quality of it to a limited extent. Such as for JPGs, a compression of 60-70 percent produces a good balance.
- No. of images: it is recommended to keep a smaller number of images for fast loading times and website speed.
2. ENABLE BROWSER CACHE
The second step to enhanced website speed optimization is enabling browser cache. It is a temporary storage area in your device that keeps all the JavaScript, CSS, and other frequently accessed image files of the websites. Developers can control for how long a specific content would be cached through cache-control headers and by utilizing different plugins.
It helps a lot to reduce the web loading time and the site becomes more responsive in delivering the (static) content upon request.
3. MINIFY CSS, JAVASCRIPT, AND HTML FILES
Just like image compression, minifying all the CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files can significantly shorten your website’s loading time and overall speed. It can be done by using various tools and plugins that would help developers deliver code to the browsers easily. Furthermore, it also decreases network latency and bandwidth consumption to a great extent.
4. CHOOSE A SUITABLE WEB HOSTING
It would not be overstating to say that your website’s overall performance and accessibility greatly depend upon the type of web hosting service you are using.
When it comes to choosing a reliable web hosting provider to improve your website speed, two of the most popular options are Hostinger and Namecheap. Both services offer competitive features like performance optimization, database optimization, and caching solutions. To help you decide which is better suited for your needs, you can explore an in-depth comparison in this blog post. For further insights on their features, take a look at another detailed comparison here.
In terms of web hosting, managed web hosting proves to be a very cost-effective and easy-to-use option for the end-to-end development of a website. The following features make it an affordable and reliable option:
- Performance optimization – compression, code minification, server-side caching, etc.
- Cache optimization.
- Content optimization – image optimization, controlling garbage data, etc.
- Search engine optimization.
- Regular software updates.
- Plugin compatibility.
- Database optimization.
- Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
- Performance testing and monitoring.
- Lightweight and speed-optimized servers.
- Server and website configuration and maintenance to minimize client-server roundtrips.
- Latest versions of PHP and MariaDB.
5. USE CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORKS (CDNs)
If you are a beginner trying to figure out website speed optimization best practices, Content Delivery Networks are going to be a vital component for it. To be more specific, CDNs are a group of server networks spread across different geographical locations. It makes sure that the data travels a lesser distance as compared to traveling from one server to hundreds of different locations.
CDNs utilize cached copies of data which results in reducing the website loading times and faster speed.
6. OPTIMIZE SERVER RESPONSE TIME
As a beginner focusing on website speed optimization, prioritizing server response time will be your valuable investment. It refers to the time taken by a web server to respond to a request placed by a browser. It is also known as Time To First Byte (TTFB). To enhance server response time:
- Upgrade your hosting plan.
- Optimize server configurations.
- Minimize the use of server-side scripts.
- Reduce unnecessary queries.
- Implement caching mechanisms.
- Optimize code efficiency.
- Monitoring your server’s performance regularly can also help optimize its response time.
7. REDUCE HTTP REQUESTS
HTTP request means that a visitor/client requests the server at any location to access any content or file (data files, images, etc) from the website. The server provides the client/visitor with a URL that contains all the requested information. Minimizing the number of HTTP requests made can significantly enhance your website’s overall speed and performance. You can easily reduce HTTP requests by:
- Combine multiple CSS and JavaScript files into a single one.
- Use image sprites.
- Use asynchronous loading for non-essential resources.
- Minimize the use of third-party scripts.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
As a beginner, it might be challenging for you to explore the diverse practices used for website speed optimization. However, the 7 easy steps guided through this article will help you kickstart your website speed optimization journey with the confidence to ace it.
To sum up:
- Always rely on a competent web hosting service provider to ensure the best performance for your website.
- Use trusted tools and plugins for speed and performance optimization of your site.
- Customize your website’s content based on less storage (which helps in fast data processing) and a high-quality approach.
