Tips to Increase Website Loading Speed
Let’s say you are starting a website to cater your business needs! What is the important thing you have to look out for? Is it the Content or Website Design or Page Load time? To sum up, all three factors are indispensable! But, in this blog, we will see the importance of page load times and some great tips to increase your website loading speed.
To start with, your web page’s load time determines its success or failure. According to surveys, more the time to load a page, less the customer’s inclination to be on your site. For instance, close to 80% of users anticipate a web page to load less than 2 seconds. So, anything more than that increases your site’s bounce rate!
Here are 9 simple tips to improve your website speed and give a good user experience!
Have a Simpler Website Design
Having a simple website reduces the number of http calls to a web page. Usually, these calls are made for each and every component you have on your website. So, more the number of such requests, more time it takes for a page to load!
Use Browser Caching
You all might have seen, a Temp folder in the hard drive of your computer! So, what does it really do? Whenever you visit a new website, all the contents, images, scripts are put in a cache folder. Now, when you visit the website again, the contents load much faster! Thanks to the Cache process! It considerably saves the page load time!
So, it is mandatory to enable the Cache settings of your browser. Doing so, reduces the http requests for images, javascript etc., thus loading the pages faster for the users.
If you are a WordPress website user, installing W3 Cache plugin can help your page load faster.
Optimize use of Images and Videos:
Have you often noticed that any image or videos taking a lot of time to load? Waiting during such scenarios frustrates the users, thus increasing the website’s bounce rate!
Though having image illustrations is unavoidable in a website, how can you optimize the use of it? One better way is to reduce or compress the size of the image! Rather than having an image file of > 1MB, a well optimized and resized image of 100KB will do good! Thus, your web page loads faster without compromising the use of images to make your content look better.
Similarly, there are videos on a web page, which takes forever to load. Because, videos with >10o MB of space, will require more resources from the server to load and play. Also, it worsens further, if multiple users try to access the video file at the same time!
You can upload your informative videos on websites like Youtube and embed the link with the content. Thus, you can handle the traffic to your website efficiently, resulting in the faster content upload.
Use of GZip Compression
You can typically reduce the size of your files using GZip compression. It compresses your content files and makes it available for download, in lesser time. It is one of the standard practices across the websites, enabling the option in their browser.
This software works well for web pages having CSS and HTML files. Several studies have shown that compressing files results in increasing the speed of your website up to 75%. There are several tools and plugins available on the internet to enable your browser for the same.
Minify and combine your files
Let’s say that, your web page has a number of CSS, Javascript and HTML file references and codes. For each of those references, an http call is made by the browser. This, in turn, increases the number of http calls made by a web page.
This is when minification comes into the picture. It is a process where unnecessary entities like white spaces and delimiters are removed from the codes. It basically reduces the size of these files, which makes it easier to transmit during such calls. Thus, the http requests will be completed in less time.
Also, if there are similar files having functionality, combining into one single file can reduce the space.
There are tools like Minifier, JS compressor that can help you to achieve the task in hand.
Use Content Delivery Network
Let’s say you have a website hosted in your web server, that has an ample opportunity for growth. Initially, the traffic is moderate and there are no issues with your page load times. But, as your business grows, so does the audience and traffic volume! Obviously, you will now have problems with website load times, creating a bad reputation among your loyal audiences.
This is where Content Delivery Network or CDN comes in to picture! In this process, you cache your web pages in a network of servers, apart from your hosting server. When a user calls a web page, the content comes from the nearest servers in the network.
For instance, if a website needs an audience from India and China, using CDN is the best option. To facilitate the process, a cached copy of your web site content is placed in servers nearest to China. Thus, audiences in and around China can access your web page without any delay in page load times.
There are several studies to back that CDN indeed optimizes the page load process and increase website loading speed. For instance, Cloudflare, Amazon services etc., comes alongside the hosting server package or as add-ons, for the benefit of users.
Improve Mobile Experience
One way to achieve the same is to reduce the use of redirects in your content. Having a link that redirects you to another page, takes additional http requests to complete the task. Usage of redirects are useful in some cases, but it does have its disadvantages when it comes to mobile devices.
As per Google, eliminating the use of redirect links should be avoided at all costs. There are studies to show that a page loads faster when it has no reference to page redirects.
Moreover, with an increase in the use of smartphones, it is mandatory for a website to have a mobile presence. Your website should have easy to navigate options and fast enough to load in a mobile browser. Users are more likely to convert if your website gives a good user experience in a mobile browser.
Thus improving your website gives a good jump start in Google ranking, SEO and a loyal audience forever.
Choose a wise DNS server
When hosting a website, you should consider all possible scenarios, which could affect you in the long run.
DNS(Domain Name Server) is the place where the name of your website is mapped with its corresponding IP address. When a user types your website name in the browser, the name is taken for lookup in the DNS. Then, the corresponding IP address is identified, displaying the website in the browser. In simple words, it eliminates the need for a user to remember the IP address of a website in question.
As a website owner, you should always choose a server that has a faster response time. Typically, this involves a lot of research to zero in the most reliable DNS server! Doing so can improve the page load time, thus reducing bounce rates and customer loyalty.
Choose a good hosting server
Have you thought about how the hosting server could impact your website performance? Having a fast web hosting server will increase website loading speed right away.
When it comes to hosting server, you have basic options like Shared, VPS, Dedicated and Cloud Hosting.
Shared hosting is a cost-effective way to host your website, during its initial stages. But as your business and traffic grow, you should probably consider what is good for your business needs.
Here you can find top 5 shared hosting providers.
VPS and Cloud hosting is a preferable choice among many users. It is due to the fact, that these servers are scalable and reliable at a greater extent. In addition, you get good security features, CDN and a reliable back up network to run your website peacefully. You can easily host a website with great growth potential that involves e-commerce transactions as well.
Dedicated hosting is for users, who wishes to have exclusive use of a server. The security and other features your hosting provider offers will be great. But, the cost of maintenance and upgrade is higher.
Overall, the type of hosting you choose impacts your website’s reliability and security.
Conclusion
To conclude, improving your website speed is an inevitable task! It not only creates an identity in Google but also increases your website’s business value. Having these points implemented will improve your website loading speed as well as the user experience and reduces bounce rate.