Best Practices for Website Loading Speed
What does it mean by a website’s loading speed? Simply put, it is known as page speed.
Page speed can easily be confused with site speed. Page speed refers to the amount of time taken for the content on your webpage to finish loading. The average loading time of several sample pages on a specific site is referred to as site speed. So, get yourself a website designer who looks out for page speed so you do not have to go through the hassle.
How does Pagespeed benefit you?
Website designers in Singapore definitely know that page speed is important to Google since it is a factor in establishing a site’s quality and gauging the user experience. A high rating is given to sites that do well in this criterion. When page performance is improved, it results in more organic search traffic and, as a result, a more successful website overall.
How does it affect or benefit the user?
The user experience is also affected by page speed. Higher bounce rates and shorter average time on pages are associated with pages that take longer to load. Conversions have been demonstrated to be harmed by longer lead times. So, do you have a slight idea of how important page speed is?
The page performance is affected by every element of the website, including the HTML code, CSS that styles page components, numerous JavaScript files, photos, videos, and other multimedia. In truth, everything from the size of an element that is measured in kilobytes to the speed of the web server on which it is stored has an impact on page performance.
We would also like to take this opportunity to share about the 5 most important elements when it comes to your website. Definitely, the loading speed of a website affects your User Experience (UX) and this should be something you need to take a closer look at.
A possible way to know how slow your page is:
You might try running a page speed test to see if your load time is too long. To test the load time of your web pages, use one of the many free internet tools available. Several of these page speed metrics programs have paid editions.
Your web designer should know all of these listed below and how they affect your page speed and if they do not. Consider twice about engaging them.
Here are some steps you should take to increase your speed.
- Compression
- Reduce HTTP requests
- Javascript and CSS
- Optimize images
- Redirects
- Clean up data
Compression
- GZip is a type of server-side data compression that can help you save time when loading pages. In other words, it reduces the size of a set of data so that it may be sent more quickly and efficiently to a user’s computer.
- Gzip compression compresses HTML, stylesheets, and JavaScript files to make them smaller. It is important to note that it does not function with photos or videos because they are already compressed independently.
Reduce HTTP requests
- Reducing the number of HTTP requests a website does is a highly effective way to minimize page load time. When someone visits a website, their browser sends a request to the webserver for the files that make up the page’s content.
- The browser renders the content on the page after the server responds with the requested files. Every file that makes up the page’s content is sent as a separate HTTP request by the browser.
- The more files on a page, the more HTTP requests there are, and the longer it takes for your web page to load.
Javascript and CSS
- Minifying JavaScript and CSS files is another efficient way to reduce website load time. Minification is a procedure that streamlines code by removing any extraneous characters, comments, and spaces and replacing them with shorter variable and function names.
- The fewer bytes of data in your code, the faster and easier your website will load.
Optimize images
Images that are really huge are a big no-no.
- Some websites include photographs that are over 1MB in size, while others are over 5MB. Gosh! That is not something you should do.
- Large picture files significantly slow down the pace of your landing page, as well as make visitors wait.
Well…often in frustration that is. So to avoid that happening to your users and yourself you should definitely read the following.
- Optimize your photographs without sacrificing image quality.
- You want modest picture files, but you also do not want your website to seem unprofessional.
- You may utilise a variety of image optimization plugins for WordPress.
There are image reduction tools that can be found easily by searching it up on Google.
Redirects
Having an efficient loading speed can reduce redirects to another page.
- A URL redirect is a command or procedure that moves a user from one URL to another automatically.
- A redirect can be implemented in a variety of ways. A 301 redirect is a technique for preserving the forwarding page’s SEO value. However, regardless of the sort of redirect, this procedure slows down the performance of your page since switching from one file to another takes time.
As a result, if feasible, aim to avoid or reduce the number of URL redirects.
Clean up data
When a browser loads your web pages, a call is issued to each script, which may be located at different URLs. Before the user may see the page, that queue of scripts must be completed and empty.
Render-blocking JavaScript files constitute a major stumbling block in these queues since they might take a long time to load, preventing the principal content on the page from being displayed. Your web developer in Singapore should have the right knowledge when it comes to your management of your JavaScript files. If he doesn’t have much knowledge about this, you really ought to look for another guy!
These are the simplest and best practices you should follow to boost your page’s performance or the easiest way would be engaging a website designer.
Author: Bayu
This author has published 25 articles so far. More info about the author is coming soon.