Website speed is very important in today’s world. Search engines like fast and secure websites and reward websites with higher rankings. Speed is essential for websites to succeed in the digital world. Slow websites face high bounce rates, revenue loss and less search engine visibility.
In this article, you will learn about website speed and how to optimize it. We will guide you through the best practices you can apply to increase website speed. You will know about common mistakes and factors affecting website speed.
Table of Contents
Why Website Speed is Important?
Website speed greatly affects user experience, the way how users interact with your website, which is directly linked with your website’s bounce rate, conversion rates, and revenue. In this digital age, people want everything to be fast. Studies have shown that website visitors want websites to open or load in under three seconds. Google itself prefers quick loading of websites. For more than three seconds visitors will close your site and leave it.
Website speed is an important ranking factor. Google and other search engines rank websites that are faster and load quickly. In other words, slow websites will not appear on the first page of search engines no matter how good your article is.
Factors Affecting Website Speed
Factors affecting website speed include excessive HTTP requests, large image sizes, and bloated JavaScript and CSS files. There are many other factors that can affect your website speed. Some are known and some are unknown. When you do not optimize your website or your website is less optimized you will have issues like server response time. Server response time is the time in which your server responds when a user opens your website.
Best Practices for Website Speed Optimization
The best practices you can follow to increase your website’s speed are few but they are very important. These practices will greatly optimize your website and improve your website speed. These practices include minimizing HTTP requests, minimizing and compressing image size —using more modern image formats, leveraging browser caching, and using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
Minimizing HTTP requests
When you use images, videos, designs, JavaScript, CSS, and other codes, these all send HTTP requests individually. The server must respond to each of these requests when a visitor visits your site. The server takes time to fulfill the requests and your website gets slower.
So, to improve your website speed you must reduce images, videos, codes, designs, and other unused elements from your website. This will lower the HTTP request and your server will have to respond to lesser requests. Speed will increase and visitors will stay on your website.
There are many plugins for WordPress users to minify CSS, and reduce unused JavaScript, and image optimization. If you are using any other CMS, then manually remove codes that you have placed manually, try not to use codes excessively, use fewer images and videos and avoid using too much CSS to design your website.
Minimizing and compressing image size
When we use images on our website, it slows down the site. Images are often bigger in size and hence server responds slower. High-quality images are mainly responsible for slow-loading websites. To overcome this, use compressors to compress images and reduce their size. In doing this we lose the image quality. To avoid loss of image quality and lesser or compressed size try uploading images in “webp” format. There are plugins to compress images and convert them to WEBP format on WordPress. But users can also do these manually online.
Leveraging browser caching
To increase website speed, we use caching. Caching is a technology used to store website data like images, stylesheets, and codes on the browser. Whenever a user visits our site, this data is stored for a time and when the user returns, he experiences a quicker response and faster website loading. As data is stored on the browser, visitors send fewer requests, and hence server responds quickly.
There are plugins for caching on WordPress. These plugins are free and provide benefits like caching, CSS minification, and image compression. Sometimes the hosting provider also provides caching automatically. So, caching allows websites to load faster.
Using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Using CDNs to improve website speed is one of the most effective and efficient ways. When we use CDNs our website copies are made and stored in servers around the world. Like if you have a server in New York, you can use CDNs to store your website in other countries like London, Islamabad, Singapore, etc.
This way your users in America, Europe, and Asia will have equal website speed if faster internet is provided. CDN reduces the distance between your user and server. Lesser the distance faster will be your website.
There are many ways you can use CDNs. Your hosting providers may already be providing you CDNs. You can use Cloudflare to provide CDNs for you. There are many other websites that provide you CDNs for free. Some provide premium CDNs for some cost. But for the long term, you need to invest and it will eventually benefit you.
Tips to Improve Server Response Time
One of the main factors that contribute greatly to slower website speed is server response time. Server response times are affected by outdated software, inefficient code, and poor configuration of the server. Server response time, in most cases, can be solved by changing hosting plans or changing your hosting provider.
It can be solved by following the techniques mentioned above such as caching and enabling HTTP/2. When you use too much media in your content then it generates more requests. If your server is poor, it will not be able to handle these requests and you face high server response time.
Mobile Optimization for Website Speed
Studies have shown that the majority of website traffic comes from mobile users. The use of mobiles is getting more and more common. It is therefore very crucial to optimize your website for mobiles. Mobile optimization can be achieved through responsive design, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Progressive Web Apps (PWA), and Mobile-First Indexing.
Responsive Design
Responsive design ensures that a website’s layout and content are optimized for various screen sizes and devices. Always use responsive themes as it is also a ranking factor.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP is an open-source initiative that provides a framework for creating mobile-friendly web pages that load quickly. AMP plugins are available that increase your website’s loading time.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
PWAs are web applications that function like native mobile apps, offering fast loading speeds and smooth navigation. You must follow some instructions to make PWA. Follow Google’s instructions to be able to validate your website PWA creation.
Mobile-First Indexing
Google’s mobile-first indexing prioritizes websites that are optimized for mobile devices, meaning that a mobile-friendly website is crucial for ranking well in search engine results.
How to Monitor Website Speed?
You can monitor website speed to improve website optimization. You can monitor to check whether the implemented techniques are working for your site or not. You can effectively improve website speed this way. There are several tools available and with the help of these tools, you can monitor your website speed. These tools include Google Analytics, GTMetrix, PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides website owners with data on website speed, including page load times and bounce rates. This tool is so helpful that it can help you increase your website revenue and conversions.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix provides detailed reports on website speed, including page load times, the number of HTTP requests, and suggestions for improvement. It is free to use. You can analyze the report generated by GTMetrix and improve your website speed.
PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a tool by Google that analyzes website speed and provides suggestions for improvement. This tool provides you with detailed information about your website. You can also see suggestions from Google to improve website speed.
Pingdom
Pingdom is a website monitoring tool that provides website owners with data on website speed and uptime. Uptime is very important to monitor because this tells you about the time your website was accessible and live. Most hosting providers say that they provide 99% uptime, so to check it you can use this tool. If uptime is below 98% try changing your hosting and shift to another hosting with good uptime.
Common Mistakes to Avoid While Optimizing Website Speed
When a new user builds a website, he is unaware of the common mistakes that every new user makes. Some common mistakes include excessive use of images and videos in articles, too many codes being inserted into the theme, non-responsive and heavy themes being used, and too many plugins widgets and designs being made that the site slows down and sometimes might break down.
As a result, the website cannot achieve its potential of being ranked on the first page of search engines. Despite having a decent number of articles and traffic he will never be able to rank the site on the first page of the search engines. Some users choose a cheap website hosting providers and do not use CDN properly.
Advanced Techniques for Website Speed Optimization
Advanced techniques to increase website speed include lazy loading of images and videos, using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), utilizing browser caching with Service Worker, and implementing a reverse proxy server.
Lazy Loading of Images and Videos
Lazy loading is a technique that defers the loading of images and videos until the user scrolls to them. This can significantly improve website speed. Along with using Lazy loading of images try using WEBP format images. Use plugins and websites to compress and convert images to WEBP and lower sizes.
Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
As mentioned above, CDNs improve website speed by serving content from the server closest to the website visitor. Cloudflare is one the most reputable CDN provider. You can also buy premium and fast CDNs.
Utilizing Browser Caching with Service Worker
Service Worker is a JavaScript file that runs in the background of a website and can cache resources to improve website speed. It stores data of your website on your browser and whenever a user visits your site again, he experiences faster website speed. There are many plugins that provide caching for free.
Implementing a Reverse Proxy Server
A reverse proxy server sits between a website’s server and the internet and can improve website speed by caching content and serving it to users faster.
Security Concerns with Website Speed Optimization
While optimizing website speed we should not comprise on website security. There are some codes necessary for website security and we should not remove them. There is a relationship between website speed and website security. We should follow best practices to maintain both healthy. These practices include updating software and plugins regularly and using secure passwords, and SSL certificates to avoid data leaks and password theft.
Regularly scan your website for security issues and try to maintain site health at 100%. Use plugins and websites to provide security-related help to your site. Always use a well-known hosting provider.
Conclusion
Website speed is vital for user experience and search engine rankings. Website owners should follow a strict approach toward website speed optimization. Follow best practices, monitor your site, and remove security concerns. By optimizing website speed, website owners can improve user experience, increase conversions, and boost search engine rankings.
