Nowadays everyone wants to make their website beautiful and full of features. But due to adding many features to the website and its beautiful design, sometimes its loading speed decreases. That is why today we will give you information about some such tips which will help your website to get a faster loading speed with more features.
What Is A Good Website Loading Speed?
Good website speed definition may be different for all websites because it depends on the context and specific goals of the website. In general, a good website speed provides a fast and smooth user experience.
A website or blog that has a page loading speed of less than or equal to 2 seconds is considered fast according to Google. But also it is notable that the ideal load time also depends on the specific type of website and its content. For example, a simple blog website may have faster load times than a complex e-commerce website with lots of images and videos.
And keep in mind that your website page loading speed can be also affected by some factors like the internet connection speed of users, hosting server location and the amount of traffic to your website.
Why Is Website Speed Important?
User experience: A website that has a fast loading speed leads to a positive user experience as well as reduced frustration. And increases the possibility that users will remain on the site and engage with its content. Websites with slow loading speeds can lead to frustration and high bounce rates because users may walk away from the site before it has had a chance to fully load. This may result in a loss of potential customers or readers.
Search Engine Optimization: Website speed is a ranking factor for search engines. You can take the example of Google which has said that page load time is a factor in their search algorithm. This means that a faster website can rank higher in search results resulting in more organic traffic.
Conversion Rates: A slow loading speed of a website can negatively affect conversion rates as users may walk away from the site before it has had a chance to fully load. A study by Akamai found that a delay of just one second in page load time can reduce 7% of conversions. Which means a website with a low loading speed may have a huge impact on businesses that rely on online sales.
Mobile Optimization: With the increasing use of mobile devices to access the Internet it is essential that websites load quickly on these devices to ensure a positive user experience. If you want to get traffic from sources like Google discover feature and news apps then you need to load your website in maximum 3 seconds on mobile devices.
How To Optimize Website Speed?
Website speed is crucial for both good user experience and search engine optimization (SEO). so we will discuss several ways to optimize your website loading speed in this part.
Minimize HTTP Requests
Whenever a user comes to your website so their browser sends an HTTP request to your server for each file such as images, scripts, and stylesheets that are needed to display the page. The more files that need to be loaded means the longer it will take for the page to display. Reducing the number of HTTP requests can significantly improve the speed of your website.
There are mainly two ways to reduce HTTP requests. The first way is that you have to reduce the number of files that you have used in your website like CSS and JavaScript files. You can merge some similar types of files to reduce the number of files for example merge all minor CSS files into your main CSS file.
Gzip compression is a file size reduction method in which all files of the website such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript are compressed into a single zip file before being sent to a web browser. A web browser needs to send only one request to access all the files in a Gzip enabled website because all the files are compressed into a single file which increases the loading speed of the website.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a group of servers allocated over multiple geographic locations that work together to deliver web content to users based on their location. The goal of a CDN is to improve website performance and availability by reducing the distance that data travels between the user and the website servers. Cloudflare is the most popular CDN service provider used by millions of websites today.
When a user requests a web page, the CDN will redirect the request to the server that is closest to the user's location. This helps in reducing the time taken for the page to load as the data has to travel less distance. Additionally, the CDN will also cache website content on each of its servers so that when a user requests the same content again then it is delivered directly from the cache which can further improve load times.
Use WebP Format
Converting all your website images to WebP format is another straight forward way to improve website loading speed. WebP is a new image format developed by Google to extremely reduce the size of images with maintaining the same visual quality. This can greatly increase the loading speed of your website because the browser has to download and process less data.
You can install webp-converter library in your website server and run it via command line interface to convert all website images to webp format at one time. You can also use online webp converter tools available on the internet to convert each of your website images into webp format before uploading on the website.
Use Caching Plugin
A caching plugin will save a copy of your website's pages and posts in the browser's cache so they do not need to be loaded from the server every time users revisit your website.
Using a caching plugin is another great way to improve website loading speed. This can help reduce the time it takes for a website to load as the browser does not have to make multiple requests for the same data. This can contribute especially to making your website superfast by not loading big fellows like images and JavaScript again and again.
There are many caching plugins available for various content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal. W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are some popular caching plugins for WordPress. These plugins can be installed and configured to cache different types of data such as pages, posts and media files. They also have the option of clearing the cache automatically or on demand. Further, some hosting providers also offer caching services which can be enabled in the hosting account settings.
Enable Lazy Loading
Lazy loading is a method that does not load images and other large files until they are required by the user. It significantly improves website speed by reducing the amount of data that has to be loaded when the page is loaded for the first time. Here are some ways to implement lazy loading on a website:
Use a lazy loading plugin: There are many lazy loading plugins available for famous content management systems such as WordPress that automatically enable lazy loading on all images on your website.
Manually code lazy loading: You can manually implement lazy loading on your website images using “loading” attribute on “img” tag or by writing your own JavaScript code to handle the loading of images.
Use JavaScript libraries: There are many JavaScript libraries available on the internet that you can use to implement lazy loading on website images and files. Some popular examples of lazy loading Javascript libraries are LazyLoad, Lozad.js and Layzy.
Reduce Third-Party Codes
Third-Party code like imported JavaScript links and CSS frameworks slowdown your performance so you should try to use less third-party resources. If you want to make your website faster without removing these codes then you can postpone or preload these files and make sure that your imported resources use cloud hosting. Asynchronous loading allows for the loading of scripts in the background so that the rest of the page can load without waiting for the scripts to complete loading.
Conclusion
Optimizing your website page loading speed is the key to success in this digital age. By following the steps mentioned here, you can significantly improve the speed and overall performance of your website without sacrificing the user experience. Pairing it with some additional techniques can add even more improvements and help to set you apart from the competition. Be sure to continue testing regularly so you're aware of any changes.