Every business, regardless of its size, relies on websites to reach customers.
Yet, simply having a website isn’t enough.
If you really want to take full advantage of your site, it is important to optimize its performance and speed.
Here’s an example –
You have an amazing website with great content, but when visitors try to access it, the page takes a lot of time to load. Tired of waiting, these visitors will move on to another site.
Research shows that if a website takes more than four seconds to load, one in four visitors might leave.
So, how to improve website performance? That’s what we are going to discuss in this article.
Today, we’ll share 10 effective strategies for website performance optimization.
Understand Website Performance and Speed
Website speed and performance are closely linked to user experience, but they have subtle differences.
Website speed refers to how quickly content loads for users. It is vital for a positive online reputation.
On the other hand, website performance includes various factors like speed, content, responsiveness, and design. They contribute to the overall functionality of the site.
For instance, when a visitor arrives, a website’s performance is judged by how fast it loads and facilitates actions like making purchases or filling out forms.
Now, you can easily build fully optimized websites without coding. AI website builders like Hocoos help you to create websites from scratch. This user-friendly platform makes it easy to create as well as manage your website. Once your website is ready, you can use the AI editor to further optimize it.
What is Website Performance Optimization?
Website performance optimization = improving the speed + responsiveness of the website
This process focuses on improving server response times, reducing page load times, and making sure the site works well on both computers and mobile devices.
You can optimize a website by doing things like cleaning up the site’s code, making images smaller, and ensuring your web server can handle your business’s needs.
An optimized webpage loads quickly and lets users interact with it smoothly. Text boxes and buttons work as they should, and videos and animations play without glitches.
Benefits of Website Performance Optimization
Businesses benefit from website performance optimization in various ways:
- Increased sales
When your website loads quickly, visitors will stay and explore your products and services. Research shows that faster page speed can lead to more purchases, with 70% of customers saying it affects their decision to buy from a retailer.
- Improved visibility
Google’s PageRank algorithm favors sites with good performance. Websites on the first page of Google results typically load in 1.65 seconds. So, if you rely on organic search for customers, prioritize website speed.
- Better user experience
A speedier and more responsive site boosts overall user experience (UX). This makes customers happier and more confident in navigating your website.
How to Improve Website Performance?
Here are the 10 powerful strategies to help you improve website performance:
- Optimize image sizes
To boost your website’s speed, it’s important to optimize image sizes. Many sites heavily rely on graphics, but if images aren’t compressed or have too high a resolution, they can slow down performance.
For instance, using images with 2x or 3x resolution for high-density displays like retina screens might be unnecessary if your users don’t have such screens. This wastes bandwidth and increases load times, especially for those on slow mobile connections.
Make sure you’re using responsive images properly by specifying multiple sizes for browsers to choose based on screen resolution. Once that’s set, optimize image sizes to reduce file size. Also, use the right file type – JPEG for colorful images and PNG for simpler graphics.
- Reduce the number of HTTP requests
Web browsers use HTTP requests to fetch various parts of a webpage, like stylesheets, images, and scripts, from a web server. Each request, especially with HTTP/1.1, comes with some overhead in establishing the connection between the browser and the server.
Additionally, browsers typically limit the number of parallel network requests. If there are too many requests queued up, some may be blocked.
Start by eliminating unnecessary requests to reduce load time. Specify the minimum render time required for your website and load only essential external resources.
Remove any unnecessary images, JavaScript files, stylesheets, fonts, and plugins, especially if you’re using a CMS like WordPress.
After trimming unnecessary elements, optimize the rest. Consider compressing JavaScript and CSS files. Optimized websites often load all required JavaScript and CSS in a single request.
- Create mobile-first code
Given the growing prevalence of mobile usage, it’s critical to comprehend your users’ preferred devices. Before optimizing for mobile, developers usually construct and test websites on their desktop computers. This method can be difficult, though.
From the beginning, think about testing your website on emulators or mobile devices. This makes changes for desktop devices easier to make and guarantees a mobile-optimized experience by default.
You can then improve the experience for devices with more screen space and power gradually. Don’t forget to simulate the CPU and network conditions to better replicate the mobile user experience.
- Select the right hosting service plan
Choosing the right hosting service plan is necessary to improve website performance. If you’re on a shared hosting provider, performance may suffer due to shared resources. Consider upgrading your plan or switching to a managed service.
You have four main hosting options:
· Shared hosting: The cheapest option, where resources are shared with other customers.
· Dedicated server: The most expensive option is renting an entire machine with customizable configurations.
· VPS (Virtual Private Server): Faster than shared hosting, using multiple machines.
· Serverless: Offers unmatched scalability at lower costs, gaining popularity recently.
- Minify and combine files
By eliminating extraneous characters like tabs, spaces, and comments to minimize file size, minification streamlines source code.
Combining multiple files into one minimizes the amount of requests the browser needs to make, which speeds up the loading time.
There are several free tools out there for minifying JavaScript and CSS files. User-friendly CSS tools are readily available online. For development reasons, you can reverse the process with good minification tools.
- Reduce the number of plugins
Plugins are handy tools used in content management systems like WordPress or other pre-made website platforms. They provide extra features such as analytics or comment sections for blog posts.
However, using plugins has drawbacks. Each one typically adds more CSS and JavaScript files to load. Some plugins might also slow down your website by increasing the time it takes to start rendering the page because they require extra processing on the server for each request.
To improve website performance, review your list of plugins and remove any that aren’t essential. This can help improve your site’s performance.
- Use website caching
Website caching involves storing a version of your files in a temporary storage location, known as a cache, for faster access. Enabling browser caching offers several benefits, including speeding up load times, reducing bandwidth usage, lowering latency, and decreasing the server’s workload.
However, a drawback is that there will typically be at least two versions of your website available at any given time. This may pose issues for real-time services dependent on precise data. Nonetheless, this challenge can be partially mitigated by clearing specific cache sections when new data is imported.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
You can streamline the process of serving static files for your website by making use of Content Delivery Networks. Codes, pictures, fonts, and JavaScript are just a few of the assets that CDNs optimize for your website’s users. Usually, setting up a CDN is rather simple.
Geographically dispersed servers power CDN operations. This guarantees consistent load times for visitors regardless of their location by serving files from the server nearest to them.
- Optimize the content
Content affects the functionality of your website and is crucial for building a relationship with visitors. Enhancing the content of your website can speed up navigation and increase conversions, making the user experience more seamless.
Ensure that the text on your website is precise and succinct. To assure quality, think about working with content writers. Although superfluous information may not have a direct impact on page speed, it can decrease conversion rates. For improved readability, use straightforward formatting and language.
Additionally, avoid using too many fonts at once, as this might make the user interface less intuitive and cause loading times to increase. Select a small selection of page-speed-optimized fonts.
- Make navigation easy
One design element that makes it easier for visitors to find and access material on a website is navigation. Although it has no direct effect on website speed, ineffective navigation might cause more page loads and a worse user experience.
Logically arrange web pages to optimize website performance. Ensure that menus, helpful links, and Call to Action (CTA) buttons are visible and simple to use.
As a result of helping search engines efficiently crawl and index sites, smooth navigation also helps search engine optimization or SEO. Consequently, this enhances the functionality of websites.
Conclusion
Your website’s functionality and speed are critical to the success of your online business. It’s simple to improve website performance and speed by putting these ten methods into practice. Additionally, especially for larger sites, think about making an investment in a CDN or better hosting options. Monitoring the functionality and speed of your website on a frequent basis is also essential. It will enable you to maintain the functionality of your website and make rapid modifications.