The speed of your website is the first impression that visitors will have. In this digital world, everyone is talking about speed. Slow website speed is one frustrating thing that will turn visitors away—website speed optimization help to increase the average time on the page and improve user experience.
In Aberdeen Group research, every 1-second delay in page loading, there will be a 7 % loss in conversion rate, 11% fewer views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. 1 in 4 people will abandon the website if it takes longer than 4 seconds to load. The percentage isn't low, and you wouldn't want that to happen.
Each business will want a positive impact on the marketing and sales process, and reducing your website page load time helps you to achieve it. With higher traffic, you will have a higher chance of converting visitors to customers. Website speed optimization can make a huge difference, and here are some tips that can help speed up your website.
Why Is Website Speed Optimization Important?
Page speed is the time needed to load your web pages or media content from the website hosting servers and display it for your user. What makes website speed optimization so important? There are two main reasons.
First, waiting for the website to load can suck. You may have experienced that before, so why do you want to slow down your website? A faster website can have many positive effects, such as increasing user experience, reducing bounce rate, time on site, etc.
Besides, it is about more than just your visitors. Your website speed to the search engines too. It is a ranking factor in both desktop and mobile indexes. Slow loading time will make it harder for search engines to crawl your site.
So how do you optimize your website speed?
Website Speed Optimization #1 – Audit Your Website
Auditing your website performance allows you to know how is your website performance. Making changes to your website can impact your website speed, so it is worth auditing your website before making any changes.
There are some free tools for you to check your website speed, such as PageSpeed Insights. You can use it to assess your Core Web Vitals on desktop or mobile. It will provide an overall performance for your site and see how to improve your website performance.
You should also try accessing your website from multiple devices to get the experience that other users will likely feel. Check whether the website speed is seamless, speedy, or slow and clunky. The data you add to your website will affect your website speed. Identifying the problem helps you to increase your website speed.
Website Speed Optimization #2 – Optimize Your Image
Adding images can make your website more attractive and engaging. But do you know that it can drag down your loading time? An average website is comprised of around 50% images. Before adding images to your website, you need to understand that the bigger the image file size is, the slower your website will load.
You will also want to optimize your images when you are doing website speed optimization. Compressing your images is a way to allow your website to load faster. Many photo-editing programs have an option for you to save for the web. This option has optimized the image for the website.
If you don't have photo-editing programs, there are free online options to compress common file types, such as JPG and PNG. You can consider using the Webp format. It provides lossy compression for images.
Website Speed Optimization #3 – Reduce The Number Of Plugins
Adding plugins for each website for additional features that third parties suggest is common. But the more plugin you install, the more resources you need to run the plugins. In the end, your website will be facing speed and security issues.
There are many times when businesses add plugins to their website initially, but as time passes, they will realize that some plugins are not in use. When optimizing your website speed, consider checking out your plugins.
c is one of the process you need to do when you are doing your website speed optimization. You can also run a performance test to determine which plugins are slowing down your website. Always keep those that are necessary and ensure that they are updated.
Website Speed Optimization #4 – Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)
It can be tricky serving static files, but it can be outsourcing this part of the infrastructure to someone else. Content Delivery Network (CDN) is specially designed for this, and they are getting popular.
CDNs help optimize the delivery of static files to your visitors, and setting them up can be very simple. When serving static files from your server, the loading time will increase if the users are far from the server. But CDNs use multiple servers to store your content across multiple locations. The server closest to your visitor will be serving the static files. The load time will be the same regardless of where the user connects.
Sematext Experience can help to monitor the performance of files hosted on CDNs. It allows you to measure if it is necessary to outsource this part of the infrastructure.
Website Speed Optimization #5 – Evaluate Your Current Hosting Provider
Your hosting provider may be one of the sources of your website speed problem. Many factors can cause speed issues, including the geographical location of your provider, the bandwidth of the network connection, and their physical infrastructure. Your hosting provider can also affect your website performance.
There are three common types of hosting: Shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting.
Sharing hosting is the most common hosting that is used all over the world and also the most cost-effective. You will be sharing CPU, disk space, and RAM among multiple sites that also use this server, lowering your website's overall performance. It can easily cause your website gets spikes in traffic.
Virtual private servers (VPS) are much faster. VPS uses multiple servers to contribute the content. If your website has average traffic, VPS can be the optimal solution for you, but you will still face speed issues if your resource loads are high.
Dedicated servers are the most expensive option. It can be your physical server. Although it may be more costly than the other two options, it will significantly boost your speed.
Website speed optimization is important for a website as it helps to improve your website speed and increase your website traffic. So we hope these tips helps you.
