Does it take forever for your web page to load? That’s more than a minor inconvenience – it could be causing you to lose leads and sales. Users are likely to navigate away from your page if it takes too long to load. But there are a lot of steps you can take to make your page work better and more quickly.
Page loading speed is a crucial factor for a good user experience. And a good user experience is crucial for your online success. Google recommends that a page load in 3 seconds or less on a mobile device. At the same time, they said the average page takes 22 seconds to load! So there’s a huge issue here, and the linked article shows how much the “bounce” worsens as the loading speed increases.
There are many ways to improve page speed. The difficulty can run the gamut. Here, we’ll present an overview of ways you can work to make your pages load faster. We won’t look at the technical details of the more complex steps, but we’ll point you to where you can learn more!
Keep pages simple
Our first suggestion is one that we find isn’t made explicit enough in other articles.
Each page of your website should revolve around a simple idea. Keep your focus. It helps eliminate confusion for users. It helps search engines know what to rank the page for. And, of course, it will help your page load faster since it’s not loaded down with superfluous content.
Minimize image size
Choosing an appropriate file type for images and compressing the file can make a huge difference in loading speed.
Today’s digital cameras can take high-resolution photos, but those details take up a lot of memory. Most of that detail isn’t even noticeable on a computer screen, though. Also, the images can be blown up to huge sizes – they’d still look incredibly sharp on a billboard! But that’s not necessary for a computer screen.
Use an image editing program – or even a free website – to resize your image. Cut it down as close as possible to the actual pixel size it will show us. Is it supposed to fill the width of the screen? Then 2000 pixels wide is generally enough. If it’ll be in a column that measures 300 pixels wide, there’s no reason for the image to be bigger than that.
You should also convert the image to the right file type. In most circumstances, JPEG (or JPG) is the best choice. It allows the best compression without any noticeable loss in quality. But other types may work better in specific circumstances. For instance, PNG files allow transparency, and GIFs can be animated. SVG files scale better although they use a lot more memory.
Try a CDN
If you have a lot of visual content on your site, you may want to subscribe to a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This is a service that helps cache your files so they can load to your site with less delay.
A CDN doesn’t actually host files, but it kind of primes that pump to send them to the end-user of your site. The network actually has servers spread out geographically to make distribution easier. This can help relieve a lot of stress on your own server.
Host video remotely
If you don’t think you’re big enough to use a CDN, you should still use a third-party service to host any video on your site. There are many services for this, including YouTube and Vimeo.
These servers are optimized for serving video, while your hosting probably isn’t. The drawback? You may have that service’s branding show up. At least on Vimeo, though, you can get a paid subscription that lets you hide their branding.
GZIP compression
GZIP is getting into a more technical step with your hosting, but it’s not too difficult to set up. It provides compression of files on your server before they’re sent out. They’re decompressed on the user’s end, which is a much faster way of using it. It’s also transparent – the user doesn’t have to do anything. The file is decompressed in their browser.
Using GZIP is standard and is available on most hosting packages. In some cases, you may have to enable it. You may have to edit a file on the back end of your site to do it. With WordPress and other content management systems, there are plugins or addons to do it for you.
Hosting
Sometimes, your hosting itself is part of the problem. There are various kinds of hosting, and not all provide the same level of service.
Remember that with shared hosting, you’re sharing resources with many other websites. That can be a factor in your page’s speed. Also, as your site becomes more popular, there’s more demand. So you may have to consider moving to a better hosting plan.
Minify Your Code
No, minify doesn’t have anything to do with the girlfriend of a famous mouse from Anaheim. It does, however, help you provide a speedy (wait, that’s a different mouse!) website.
“Minifying” means getting rid of superfluous characters in your website’s code. In this case, you’re not removing any actual code. It gets rid of extra spaces, line returns, and the like.
Javascript, CSS, and HTML files are often minified. The good thing is, even these small changes can add up to a big difference. However, it can transfer neatly-organized code into a huge block of seemingly random characters. The computer still understands it, but it can make it hard for the human eye to follow.
It does require some caution to minify a site. If you do it manually, it’s easy to erase an extra character, screwing up everything. There are also rare occasions when the site might not work well after minification.
CMS users can usually find addons that will make minification as easy as a single click.
Choose themes and plugins carefully
If you use a content management system like WordPress, it’s important to choose your theme, page builder, and plugins carefully.
Each of these involves its own code. Not all code is equal! Sometimes there is “fluff” that will slow things down. Some parts might be poorly coded, too. They work, but not as efficiently as possible.
Be sure to read reviews and look for information on how the component affects page speed. Remember that some elements are hard to change afterward, so try to make a good choice from the beginning!
Avoid redirects
Sometimes, it’s necessary to redirect an old address to a new page. Maybe you had to restructure all the addresses on your site. Or you could have realized that you had two very similar pages that should be combined into one.
But each time a URL redirects to another URL, it takes a tiny bit of time. And that time adds up.
Minimize the amount of redirecting on your site. Only do it when it’s absolutely necessary.
From an SEO perspective, redirects can sometimes be helpful. But only redirect when it’s to substantially similar content. Don’t redirect to your home page from an article you removed, for instance. Instead, create a good 404 page that will help the user find what they’re looking for.
Code optimization
Code optimization is a bit different than minifying. It’s also a bit more grueling.
Optimization requires you to get through all your files – especially CSS – and remove anything that’s not used on the site. This could be because you planned something that you never implemented. Or it could be that you lost track of what you’ve already put in place.
This is a tedious and demanding process. If you eliminate the wrong line, it could change your colors, fonts, and other formatting on your site. But it does help eliminate needless code so your computer doesn’t need to process it.
Leverage Browser Caching
This is a somewhat technical issue that you may need help with.
A browser’s cache will save files from sites that have previously been visited. This speeds up loading. The next time the same browser visits the site, it knows it already has the file handy. It doesn’t have to be downloaded again. There’s no real effect on someone’s first visit, but it will speed things up when they come back.
Those cached files expire after a set time. But that time can be programmed, and you can use that to your advantage.
If you have elements that change frequently, you want the user’s browser to check them often. That helps guarantee that the user sees the current version of your page.
But if there are “stable” elements that rarely change, you can set the cache longer. That way, their computer knows to use the cached version rather than downloading the element again.
For instance, if you feature a new product every day, you want that element to update often. But your company’s logo will be in place for years, so that can be set to stay for 31,536,000 – that’s the number of seconds in a year!
Ordering the loading of page elements
We’ve put this last not because it’s the most important but because it’s likely the most technical.
Many elements of a web page aren’t visible to your users. But they’re still important for the functioning of your page. Often these are in the code’s “header” section. And the computer, like us, normally reads from top to bottom.
That means that some of these invisible parts get processed before some of the visible ones. And that slows things down.
You may need a programmer to do this, but some of that code can be moved lower in the page. It will still work, but it won’t hold things up for the user. This can be a source of awesome speedups for the page.
Tools for evaluating your page speed
There are a few free tools you can use to assess issues with your page speed. They’ll help get you started as you seek to make necessary changes.
It’s important to remember that these look at individual pages, not entire sites. So to do a thorough job, you have to go through page by page. Some fixes will work for your whole site, though, so as you fix one, it will reduce problems for other pages.
Google Page Speed Insights provides information for a variety of areas you can work on. You just enter your page’s URL and it will create a report. Some of the information is a bit complicated, especially when it comes to server issues. But it’s a wonderful place to start.
Another tool we often use is GTMetrix. It pulls up a couple reports and gives letter grades for your page as a whole as well as individual categories. It also ranks you against other sites it’s tested. There are even tooltips that will give you explanations of what each category means.
While we were writing this – quite literally – we received notice of a brand-new site, simply called “Fast or Slow.” to test page speed. It’s from Wordfence, the makers of a great security plugin for WordPress. We’ve only been able to test it quickly, but it looks impressive. It records much of the same data as the other two, but by default it checks the response time from various sites around the world. This can help you make choices about your hosting.
Conclusion
Speeding up your website makes it a much more pleasant place to visit. And that means the visitors are more likely to become clients. There are many steps you can take to make your site load faster, from the simple to the complex. All of them should be part of your site maintenance, though, so that you can ensure a great experience!