[ad_1]
Website speed is crucial when it comes to site performance, several studies prove that website speed interrelates with other important metrics.
An optimized website speed is immensely helpful in increasing average user time on the page, reduce bounce rate, and increasing conversions.
A B2B site with a web load time of lesser or equal to 1 second has three times more conversion rate than a website that has a web load time of 5 seconds, according to a study by Portent.
How to Measure Website Speed?
Now that we know website speed and web load time play an important role in website performance, let us understand how to measure website speed.
Various tools or page speed tests such as Pingdom website speed test, GTmetrix, and Google Page Speed Insights are available to check if a website is optimized.
All the above website page speed tests are beginner-friendly options. However, Google Page Speed Insights is a convenient and easy-to-use tool that can be used on mobile and websites.
Page Speed Insights after analyzing the content on a page, score it between a scale of 0 to 100. It also gives separate scores and suggestions for both mobile and desktop site versions.
This information shows the performance of a site and gives an initial starting point to work on maximizing web load time.
How to Optimize Website Speed and Improve Web Loading Time?
A lot of factors like hosting provider, JavaScript and CSS, images, web fonts, etc. weigh on website speed and web load time.
Speed up your website with these 10 expert tips to improve your website speed and web loading time.
Enhance your website’s performance and keep visitors engaged with all these factors to get the fastest website by following below steps:
1. Site auditing and prioritizing potential fixes
The page speed test can be used to identify the current website standing in terms of optimization.
Based on the score from the test one can proceed with steps to improve overall website speed, performance and identify opportunities for improving the score.
Make sure to include different devices like mobile, desktop, or tablet for page speed tests since their results would vary based on device-specific website rendering.
After looking at the results try to prioritize potential fixes based on what matters most to the visitors.
2. Choose an optimized hosting solution
Hosting provider plays a major role in website management and its performance. Factors like the geographical location of your provider, physical infrastructure, and overall bandwidth of network connection impact performance and website speed.
One of the common mistakes while choosing a website hosting plan is selecting a hosting plan with a lower monthly rate, which generally hosts website data at far away location which results in more latency.
3. Compress and optimize images online
Images enhance the look and appearance of the web page and also increase the quality of the content. However, large images result in high web load time and decreasing website speed.
One of the easiest ways to increase page loading speed is to compress and optimize the images. There are multiple image compression tools like Tiny PNG, Compress Now, Attrock, etc. which can reduce image sizes anywhere from 25% to 80%.
4. Reduce your redirects
Multiple redirects on the website can increase web load time as every time a page redirect somewhere
else, it prolongs the HTTP request and response process. One can use a tool such as Screaming Frog for identifying all redirects and where they lead to.
In some cases, redirecting might be necessary, like when one needs to move to a new domain. Unnecessary redirects on a site can result in significantly lower page loading times.
5. Cache your web pages
Caching is another important way to decrease web load time. Caching saves copies of the site’s files, minimizing the work needed for the server to generate and serve a web page to a visitor’s browser.
Caching can be done at the server level, meaning host takes care of it, or another option is to use a caching plugin like W3 Total cache, which is a free WordPress plugin that makes caching web pages convenient and easy.
6. Enable browser caching
Browser caching is another form of caching one can leverage for improving web load time. This technique enables the browser to store an array of information, including stylesheets, images and
JavaScript files, so that every time a user visits, these files are not reloaded every time from the server.
7. Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
Optimizing the loading of files can also improve web load time and increase website speed. Minimizing CSS, JavaScript and HTML means removing unnecessary spaces, comments, characters, and unneeded elements to reduce the size of the files.
8. Use asynchronous and deferred loading for your CSS and JavaScript files
Website CSS and JavaScript files can be loaded either synchronously or asynchronously.
Synchronously refers to loading one file at a time, in the order they appear on the web page, and
Proceed to next when initial file has been fully loaded. Asynchronously loading enables multiple files to load simultaneously eliminating render-blocking resources and increasing website speed.
9. Leverage a Content Delivery Network
When all data required for loading site is stored in a single place, initial and ongoing load times suffer.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers that could help in improving page loading speed. Hosting and delivering copies of the site’s static content from servers located across the globe helps in reducing web load time.
10. Eliminate unnecessary plugins
Every website plugin has a different purpose for use and not all plugins are created equal. Having a lot of plugins on site can cause unnecessary bloat that slows website speed.
Outdated plugins can pose a security threat as well. Therefore, it is a smart idea to minimize the number of plugins one uses on their website.
If one follows the above speed optimization tips, their website speed would be decent, pretty fast, and web load time should be well under 2-3 second mark.
Exabytes provide variety of solutions for hosting a website such as business web hosting, cPanel, WordPress hosting, and more.
Host your website online on the fastest web hosting platform with almost 5X faster website loading speed, a user-friendly control panel, and a free lifetime domain.
Click here to contact our team to get customized solutions tailored to your needs with a 100-day risk-free guarantee. Reach out to us for more details.
Related articles:
NVMe, SATA & SAS: Which is the Fastest Speed for VPS Hosting
5 Reasons to Switch NVMe Web Hosting Plans. Here’s Why.
[ad_2]
