22 Dec
When running a small business people usually don’t focus on the website’s speed. But that can’t be neglected. Because of the website’s speed you may make customers or lose them.
We’ve all had the experience of clicking a link to a site, only to find it taking a few seconds too long to load, leads us to visit another site instead. In fact, 47% of consumers expect a site to load in two seconds or less for desktop. If a site takes longer than three seconds to load 53% of mobile users choose to abandon.
Page load speed is one of the critical factors that determine where your site ranks on SERPs. Google’s ranking algorithm uses site speed as a signal, making it even more important that your site loads quickly.
Use an open-source tool like Google Lighthouse to measure your current site speed, then assess the different factors that could be slowing down your load time. Now, figure out which of these factors you’d like to change. We’ve included a few tips to help improve your site’s speed below:
1. Less is more
Don’t overload your site with various media assets like photos, videos, and oversized files. This affects your website speed. Determine what is unnecessary or no longer relevant on each page and remove them to help your server break through the clutter and make your site faster.
2. Optimize your images
Reduce the file size of your images to improve site speed by utilizing less bandwidth and storage on your network’s server. Many people tend to download images from stock photo sites and upload them to their server and use them without ever bothering to optimize them for the web.
If you find yourself using large images, especially for hero images, run them through an optimization software like Compressor.io or Image Optimizer. Keep all your images below 150KB, nothing above 1920px in width, at an average/medium/72dpi quality level.
When it comes to what file extensions you should use for what, use this as a basic formula:
- SVG is suitable for vector images you want to receive a high amount of detail in.
- PNG should be used for images you need a transparent background behind, such as a circular image of a person or Facebook’s ‘F’ logo.
- JPG is best for photographs or anything where fine detail is less important.
While images will still take up the majority of your HTTP requests, optimizing them will improve your website performance.
3. Enable caching
By enabling browser and CDN caching, users visiting your site will have certain information such as images, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and media files temporarily saved, allowing your web page to load faster the next time they visit your site.
Static assets have a cached lifetime of at least a week, while third party items such as widgets or ads only last a day. CSS, JS, and images, and media files should have expirations of one week, but ideally, one year, as any longer will violate RFC guidelines.
4. Location matters
Reducing this distance by spreading your content across a variety of geographically dispersed servers just isn’t a viable option, and will be a bit too complicated to implement. This is where a content delivery network (CDN) comes in. A CDN is a collection of web servers distributed across multiple locations so content can be more efficiently delivered to users.
CDNs are typically used for static content or files that do need to be touched once uploaded. Servers are selected based upon the user’s measure of network proximity. For example, the server with the quickest response time and/or fewest network hops is chosen.
Larger companies tend to own their own CDN, while medium-sized businesses will use a CDN provider such as EdgeCast. Whereas, smaller companies may find a CDN unnecessary or outside of their budget, so using websites such as CNDjs which has a library of JS and CSS files and frameworks can help you prevent hosting certain files on your own servers while increasing their load time.
Wrap up
Fast loading speed of your website leaves a positive impact on your visitors. As today, users have no patience for websites with poor load speeds or inadequate performance. This means you’re not only losing your current visitors and decreasing conversion rates, but you run the risk of losing traffic from those customers who may have referred your website to others.
Hence, there are various factors that contribute to have a high performing site. Consider which ones make the most sense for your business as a few small tweaks can greatly impact your online success.
Still facing the website loading issue? Contact us we are always here to help you!