It’s 2022 and almost all of the world is shifting to online businesses. The competition has risen. The consumer who is online is mostly impatient and looks for quick solutions to their problems. So, what is the most important element for a user-friendly website? Its load speed.
What is website load speed?
Is there anything more frustrating than a slow-loading website? If you have to sit and wait for a webpage to load while you have so many other websites on the internet with the same services, then why should anyone sit idle? These increased load times can cause you to lose a large potential consumer base and build a bad reputation for your brand. Websites with great performance and speed have lower bounce rates, more conversions and engagement rates, rank higher in organic search, and provide better user experiences.
Why is Fast Loading Websites Important?
According to a survey:
- 50% users in the USA say that a slow loading webpage is the no.1 reason they would abandon a website.
- 46% online buyers say checkout speed is the no.1 reason they would return to an online store.
- 18% of online shoppers would abandon an online store if the loading speed is slow.
- 14% shoppers would go on to another site to shop if the page loading speed is low
What is the Ideal load time for a Website?
Usually, the ideal load time considered for a website is between 2-3 seconds, which shouldn’t be exceeded or the majority of people abandon the website, which can have a major impact on bounce rate.
But how can you make a website fast? Let’s take you through the 11 easy tips that can boost your website’s loading speed:
1. Choose a better Hosting Plan
One of the easiest and simplest ways to make your website faster is to consider a better web hosting provider. Most people start up with a shared hosting plan that is comparatively cheaper, but as the load of content on your website grows, you should instantly switch to a VPS server or a dedicated server. Once you upgrade from the basic shared hosting, you’ll notice the difference right away.
2. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of servers spread over many regions that enables the rapid delivery of content for a website. It can help speed up your website’s load time at different locations around the world. Basically, the distance that information must travel between the server and the user is shortened via a CDN. Instead of being a single server, a CDN is a network of servers which fetches data from the Web hosting server and creates cache. Now when a user opens your website, your web’s content in the form of cache is extracted from the CDN server closest from the requested location. This will reduce your website’s load time on his device
3. Image Optimization:
Images are a vital and most engaging part of an attractive webpage, but the troubling part of these images is their size. Sometimes these images have large sizes that contribute largely to the slowness of a website. These images take time to load and slow down the loading of web pages. Shrink the size of your images and remove the images that are not needed or are bloating the website for no reason. You can do it manually or use tools like ImageOptim or Kraken, and for WordPress you can use WP Smush or Optimus, which would compress the size of your images while not compromising the quality.
Just like everything is evolving to make things faster, so are image formats. JPEG AND PNG are not outdated as image formats like WEBP and AVIF are often used for better loading speed of images. These formats provide less data consumption while making your webpages faster and allows no compromise on quality.
4. Optimize Your CSS code and JavaScript
When visitors to your website wish to access a specific file, alot of HTTP requests occur if your website has a large number of JavaScript and CSS files. This decreases the load speed of your web page.
Page speed can be significantly improved by minifying your code, or reducing it to the shortest size possible without compromising its functionality. You can do this manually as well as by using tools like Script Minifier, Grunt or WillPeavy tools.
5. Use Cache to your advantage
Page caching is the process of storing static items (such as HTML texts and photos) in a form in which data can be computed faster on websites so that users can access them more swiftly. This means that the website doesn’t reload for each user repeatedly because the cache is already stored in their system.
You can enable caching in your general settings if you have a dedicated server. Website caching is typically not possible when using a shared server. This also adds an advantage of a dedicated server plan about which we talked above.
6. WordPress Plugins that could load website FAST
If you have a website on WordPress, using plugins can significantly make your life easier while making your website load time less. Plugins such as
- WP Rocket
- Nitro Pack
- Perf Matters
- WP Super Cache
These can assist you in keeping your website performing well and fast on desktop and mobile both. But using too many plugins or not removing a plugin after its purpose is fulfilled can affect your website’s performance as well, which we will talk about further.
7. Eliminate useless Plugins:
Bloating your website with plugins can significantly affect your load speed sometimes. Try minimizing unnecessary stuff. Run a test and see which plugins are slowing down your pages. Remove plugins that have little to no impact on enhancing website performance. You can use Query Monitor or GT Metrix to test your website.
8. Eliminate render-blocking
Determine and eliminate resources that are preventing your website from rendering. The crucial rendering path can be shortened and page load times decreased by lowering the number of render blocking resources, which will also improve load time while loading on the background
9. Decrease Redirects:
Too many HTTP requests impact the website’s performance very negatively. I suggest you do a test run on your website and eliminate the ones that have no purpose. You can do this by simply by using the Screaming Frog SEO Audit too.
10. Remove unnecessary media:
Check your media if it has unused images or duplicate images, especially in WordPress where you can find tons of pictures and media from the default theme. Or if you have uploaded an image multiple times into its media or if it is not being used on the website. Remove unnecessary weight from your website to make it lighter. All these things contribute to making your web pages load slowly.
11. Check your Website speed:
Check your website load time frequently to make sure it’s fast and you’re not losing online customers. Analyze your load speed time on mobile and desktop both. But how to check your website load speed? It’s really simple. You can easily check your website load speed through these tools:
- GTMETRIX
- Google’s Page Speed Insight
- Pingdom.
These tools not only tell you the load time but also give recommendations on how to make your website perform better and faster.
Conclusion:
The small things and few clicks can make a whole lot of difference in a website performance. Typically a user loses interest over a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load so make sure that its fast loading on all devices. We recommend these easy yet effective tips above to make your website fast. If you need a custom developed website or even a WordPress that is super fast with the minimum loading time, Web Vital can save you the headache as they are currently one of the best in the market.
