Website speed is a huge part of how your business is presented to the world. Slow loading pages can have a profoundly negative effect on performance, with 1 second delays reducing page views by up to 11%. A slow user experience can also reduce conversion, increase your bounce rate, impact your search ranking and ultimately damage your company’s reputation.
If your website speed isn’t up to scratch, it’s not always easy to understand why. However, there can be a plethora of reasons for a page not loading quickly enough. This guide will offer some insight into how to enhance speed before seeking out a professional website speed optimisation service.
Note: If you’re unsure about your website speed, use the PageSpeed tool from Google!
Optimise your images
Images such as photography and infographics are essential to creating essential web content, however, large, high-definition images can slow pages down significantly. If your website is slowing down due to images, you must compress and optimise them, ideally using tools that minimise compromise on quality.
Reduce redirects
Excessive redirects on a page can significantly impact website speed. These functions prolong HTTP requests and response times and can be responsible for a website not loading properly. Use a redirect mapping tool to determine how to better use your redirects, without sacrificing the function of the page.
Choose the right host
It’s tempting to pick a budget web-hosting provider, especially when starting out in business. However, the negative impacts of slow website speeds can lose you far more than any savings you make with such a decision. Make sure to choose a performance-optimised hosting platform to maintain good speeds.
Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
CDNs are networks of servers that are designed to increase website speed. The system essentially works by working with a primary host to deliver static content to external servers, closer to your visitors, sharing the load of hosting the data and decreasing the distance data requests have to travel.
Utilise browser caching
Browser caching is a unique technique for optimising website speed by allowing the browsers of visitors to store certain elements of your page. This information can include but isn’t limited to:
- Images
- Stylesheets
- JavaScript files
This saves browsers from having to fetch the data as if it’s brand new every time, speeding up loading times.
Minify code wherever you can
Minifying the code that your website runs off will reduce its file size, encouraging speedier loading. The process is essentially based on combing through your code to remove any unnecessary characters including spaces or symbols, along with comments. This can take a while, so it’s worth using a plugin to automate this process.
Remove any unnecessary plugins
While plugins can be useful for making websites functional or stylish, they can also slow them down and decrease usability. Make sure to regularly audit your website’s plugins to check for any unnecessary ones, then delete the ones you no longer need. Also, test them individually to see which ones are slowing down the page more than others.
Increasing website speed is a fairly straightforward task, however, if you’re not technologically-inclined, the processes described above (and others) can still feel complex and confusing. For those unsure of how to start actioning these steps, reaching out to a professional team can be the most efficient way to speed up your website and maximise the impact of your content.
