The initial impression of your business is formed by the speed of your website. It is crucial to realize that you will not have a second opportunity to enhance the user experience. A slow website speed is a highly irritating factor that will discourage people from using your platform.
Websites that perform well will lead to increased return visits, reduced bounce rates, improved conversions, higher rankings in organic search, enhanced user engagement, and better user experience. On the other hand, slow websites will result in financial losses and a tarnished reputation.
In this article, we will provide you with suggestions on how to enhance the performance and loading time of your website, which will have a positive effect on marketing and sales activities. By reducing the time it takes for your pages to load, you will increase website traffic and draw in more qualified leads that can be converted into customers.
Importance of website speed optimization
Let’s examine how website speed optimization affects the important aspects of website success, starting with page load time. Page load time is a metric used to measure web performance, indicating the time it takes for a page to appear on the user’s screen.
- conversion
- visibility
- usability
Conversion is a crucial element for the success of your business as it involves persuading your visitors to perform desired actions. These actions may include purchasing your product, signing up for newsletters, enrolling in a webinar, or downloading a guide.
Conversions rates will be higher if the page loads faster. According to research by Hubspot, a 1 second delay leads to a 7 percent decrease in conversions. As an example, Amazon could lose $1.6 billion in sales each year due to a 1 second page slowdown.
The ease of finding your website is affected by its load time. Google considers website speed as one of the factors in determining site rankings. A website with slow performance leads to a negative user experience and receives less visibility in search results.
Starting from December 2017, the Google search engine has been including mobile versions of web pages when ranking them, even for searches conducted on desktops. The primary objective behind this ruling is to safeguard users from websites that offer subpar performance and lack responsiveness across different devices.
The usability of a website, including factors like page speed, load time, and responsiveness to user requests, has a direct impact on customer loyalty. A user will be more satisfied if your website performs well. Having a great user experience helps in building a substantial customer base and a strong brand.
Best practices to speed up your website
After testing the speed of your website, you can proceed with optimizing it. Numerous methods exist for improving the speed of your website, and we have compiled a list of the most impactful ones.
1. Use a content delivery network (CDN)
A content delivery network consists of multiple web servers located in different places, which serve web content to users based on their location. When a website is hosted on a single server, all user requests are directed to that same hardware, resulting in an increase in processing time for each request.
Furthermore, when users are located far from the server, the load time also increases. However, by utilizing CDN, user requests are redirected to the closest server, resulting in faster content delivery and improved website performance. Although this method is relatively costly, it proves to be highly efficient in optimizing load time.
2. Move your website to a better host
There are three potential types of hosting available.
- Shared hosting
- Virtual Private Servers (VPS) hosting
- Dedicated server
Shared hosting is the most widely used type of hosting worldwide, as it offers the quickest and most cost-effective way to put your website online.
To ensure improved optimization, it is crucial to select a fast web host. In shared hosting, the server’s CPU, disk space, and RAM are shared among multiple sites, resulting in a slower performance compared to VPS or a dedicated server.
Virtual Private Servers and dedicated servers are known for their increased speed. The distribution of content in VPS occurs through the utilization of multiple servers.
If you have a VPS, you will share the server with other users but have your own section of the virtual server where your configurations do not affect other clients. If your website has average traffic or if you have an eCommerce site with occasional spikes in traffic, VPS is the ideal solution for you.
One way to have the most expensive hosting option is by utilizing a dedicated server, which allows you to have your own physical server. In such a scenario, you are responsible for paying for server rent and hiring a system administrator to handle its maintenance.
One alternative is to choose to rent dedicated cloud resources from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, or any other public cloud provider. It is also possible to combine both approaches to create a hybrid cloud, as we recently discussed. When using dedicated servers, all resources are exclusively yours, and you have complete control over them. Additionally, cloud infrastructures offer limitless and readily available scalability through various packages.
Serverless architecture offers an alternative that eliminates the need for maintenance and server setup procedures. Take a look at our other article that delves into the specifics and advantages of serverless architecture.
3. Optimize the size of images on your website
Images are beloved by everybody. In successful eCommerce sites, images are a crucial aspect. The presence of numerous photos, images, and graphics on your product pages enhances user interaction. However, the drawback of utilizing images is their tendency to be large files, which in turn can hinder website speed.
There are two effective ways to reduce the size of an image without sacrificing its quality. One method is to utilize tools like ImageOptim, JPEGmini, or Kraken to compress the images. Although this process may be time-consuming, it is worthwhile. Another approach involves using the
and
attributes in HTML responsive images, which automatically adjust the image size according to the user’s display properties.
4. Reduce the number of HTTP requests
Web browsers use HTTP requests to retrieve various components of a page such as images, stylesheets, and scripts from a web server. Each request, particularly when using HTTP/1.1, requires additional time to establish a connection between the browser and the remote web server.
In addition, web browsers often impose a restriction on the amount of concurrent network requests. Consequently, if multiple requests are awaiting processing, some of them may become obstructed due to an excessively lengthy queue. To tackle this issue, your initial course of action should involve eliminating any needless requests. Determine the least amount of time required for your website to be displayed, and solely load the essential external resources.
In order to maintain the same meaning, rephrase the text below step by step while ensuring that no new information is added and no information is removed. Any unnecessary images, JavaScript files, stylesheets, and fonts should be removed. Additionally, if a CMS like WordPress is being used, any unnecessary plugins should be eliminated as they tend to load additional files on each page.
After you have removed unnecessary elements, the subsequent action is to enhance the remaining ones. It is advisable to consider condensing your CSS and JavaScript files. Websites that are optimized typically combine all necessary CSS and JavaScript into a single request for each.
Sematext Experience enables you to monitor and identify slow-loading HTTP requests and resources for your actual users.
5. Switch to HTTP/2
In the previous section, we discussed the downside of sending numerous requests via HTTP/1.1. HTTP is the browser’s communication protocol with a remote web server. It uses this protocol to transfer your website’s HTML, along with various resources like images, stylesheets, and JavaScript files.
Reducing the number of requests is an effective method for solving this problem, which is beneficial in any scenario. Decreasing the resources needed for website rendering will invariably lead to faster page load times. However, there is an alternative method to eliminate this additional burden.
One possible step-by-step rephrasing of the text while maintaining the same meaning could be: 1. It is possible to transition your website to HTTP/2. 2. The process of doing this will vary based on the hosting provider you are using. 3. HTTP/2 offers numerous advantages over HTTP/1.1, including the capability to transmit multiple files simultaneously on a single connection, thereby eliminating the need for multiple requests and reducing overhead.
6. . Write mobile-first code
It is important to verify the devices your users are using, such as through a RUM solution like Sematext Experience or your preferred website analytics tool (e.g. Google Analytics), as mobile devices have become dominant.
Developers typically write and test websites on their desktop devices before optimizing them for mobile devices. The difficulty of this process often depends on the choices made during the website’s development phase.
If we were to test the website using mobile devices (or emulators), we could prioritize writing for mobile first. As a result, the experience would be optimized for mobile devices as a baseline.
By adjusting the website for desktop devices first, the process would be easier. We can gradually improve the experience for devices that have higher capabilities and larger screens. However, it is important to also limit the network and CPU to accurately simulate the experience of mobile users.
7. Minimize time to first byte
Time to first byte, also known as TTFB, refers to the duration it takes for the browser to receive the initial byte of data from the server. Although this primarily pertains to server-side matters, it significantly impacts the overall functioning of your website. Consequently, it is imperative to invest effort into enhancing this aspect.
If you want to improve TTFB, the main aspect you can influence is the server processing time. To achieve this, you can consider following some of Google’s suggested tips.
- Optimize the server’s application logic to prepare pages faster. If you use a server framework, the framework may have recommendations on how to do this.
- Optimize how your server queries databases, or migrate to faster database systems.
- Upgrade your server hardware to have more memory or CPU
8. Choose the right hosting service plan
If you are using a shared web hosting provider, the overall performance is likely to be subpar, which ties into the previous point about minimizing time to first byte. To improve this, it is recommended to upgrade the hosting service plan or, if you are using WordPress, consider using a managed service that is renowned for providing stable and high-performance hosting.
There are three primary choices available to you (in addition to a bonus one) for hosting.
- Shared – traditionally the cheapest of the hosting options is a way to share the resources of the server with other customers.
- VPS – a virtual private server is significantly faster than a shared host but instead of using just one machine it uses multiple machines.
- Dedicated – dedicated servers are obviously the most expensive of the three and with this one, you basically rent an entire machine that can be usually configured to your wildest desire.
- Serverless – as of late, serverless has gotten a foothold in server space as it offers unmatched scalability at a fraction of the cost.
Before making the switch, it is important to measure your performance first, as always.
