The website speed will give you a first impression of your business. It is important to understand that you will not have a second chance in terms of user experience. One of the most frustrating things is the low speed of the website, which discourages your resources。
High-performance websites can lead to high return rates, low exit rates, higher conversion rates, participation, higher natural search rankings and better user experience. Slow websites cost you money and damage your reputation. By reducing page loading time, you will have a positive impact on marketing and sales processes. You will receive higher traffic and attract more eligible potential clients that can be converted to customers. In this document, we will give you advice on how to improve website performance and page loading time。
Importance of website speed optimization
Page loading time is a web performance indicator that shows the time required for the page to be displayed on the user screen。
Let's see how the optimization of website speed has affected the success of the site:
Convert. The website conversion is an important factor in your business success, which means that your visitors do what you want them to do. For example, they purchase your products, subscribe to current affairs newsletters, register webinars or download guides。
The faster the page is loaded, the higher the conversion rate. According to hubspot, a delay of 1 second means a 7% reduction in conversion rates. For example, a one-second drop in page speed could cost the amazon $1. 6 billion in annual sales。
Visibility. The loading time of your website also affects the user’s ease of finding your website. The speed of the website is one of the factors that google takes into account in ranking the site. Low-performance website users experience less and therefore receive less publicity for search results. Since december 2017, google search engines have also started ranking on mobile versions of pages, even on desktop searches. The objective of this decision is to protect users from websites that are low performance and do not respond to all devices。
Availability. Website availability (e. G., website page speed, load time and website responsiveness to user requests) directly affects client loyalty. The better your website works, the better the users will be. Good user experience is one way to build a large client base and a strong brand。
Methods for assessing website speed
Before starting to optimize your website, you should determine your current loading time and define what reduces your website speed. Then you should set your website performance target. The time for loading the 2018 page is suggested to be less than 3 seconds. According to google's study of the average speed of movement across industries, only a small number of websites are close to recommending speed。
United states average moving speed index
Therefore, if you optimize the speed of your website to an acceptable level, you will have a strong ranking advantage over your competitors。
The speed optimization of the website listed here is very different, and sometimes solutions to one problem may have a negative impact on the other side of your website. That is why we suggest that the speed of the website be analysed after each change to determine which operations provide the best results。
There are several performance assessment tools worth trying:
Performance budget calculator
Guide for expediting the website
Once you have tested the speed of the site, you can start optimizing it. There are many different ways to make your website work faster, and we have created the list of most effective methods。
1.
The content delivery network is a set of web servers distributed across different geographical locations that provide web content to end-users according to their location. When you host a website on a single server, all user requests are sent to the same hardware. As a result, the time required to process each request would increase. Most importantly, loading time increases when users are away from servers. Using a cdn, the user request is redirected to the nearest server. As a result, content is delivered to users more quickly and the website works faster. This is a rather expensive but highly effective way of optimizing loading time。
2. Move your website to a better host
There are three possible types of hosting:
The most popular type of hosting used worldwide is shared hosting. This is the cheapest way to get a line on your website in a short time. The selection of fast web hosts to ensure better optimization is essential. By sharing the host, you can share cpu, disk space and ram with other sites that also use this server. This is the main reason why shared hosts are not as fast as vps or dedicated servers。
Virtual private servers and dedicated servers are much faster. Vps uses multiple servers for content distribution. Have vps, you can share the server with other users and have your own virtual server component, and your configuration will not affect other clients. Vps will be your best solution if you have average traffic on your website or if your e-commerce site has peak traffic at some point in time。
The most expensive hosting option is to use a dedicated server, which can be your own physical server. In this case, you pay for the rental of the server and hire a system administrator to maintain it。
Another option is to rent special cloud resources from aws, microsoft azure, google or other public cloud providers. These two approaches can also be combined into hybrid clouds that we have recently discussed. Use a dedicated server, all resources are yours, and you can control it completely. Cloud infrastructure could also add unlimited and needs-based scalability to many software packages。
The absence of a server structure is another option to completely eliminate maintenance and server settings. Consider reading our separate articles on the details and benefits of a server-free structure。
3. Optimizing the image size of the website
Everybody likes to make dramatic images. In the context of a successful e-commerce website, imagery is an essential part. A large number of photographs, images and graphics on the product page can increase participation. The disadvantage of the use of images is that they are usually large documents that slow down the speed of the website。
The best way to reduce image size without compromising its quality is to compress images using tools such as imageoptim, jpegmini or kraken. The process may take some time, but it is worth it. Another way to reduce the size of the image is to use HTML response images and properties, which adjust the image size to the user display properties。
4. Reduction in the number of plugins
The plugin is a generic component for each site. They added specific functions suggested by third parties. Unfortunately, the more plugs are installed, the more resources are needed to run them. As a result, the website is operating at a slower pace and there may be security problems. The number of plugins will increase over time, and some of them may no longer be used. We suggest that you check all the plugins you have installed and remove those that are not required. First, run performance tests on your page to find out which plugins will slow down your website. The speed of the site depends not only on the number of plugins installed, but also on their quality. Do not load a large number of scripts and styles or plugins that generate a large number of database queries. The best solution would be to retain only what was necessary and to ensure that they remained up to date。
5. Minimization of javasNumber of cript and css files
If your website contains a lot of javasCript and css files will lead to a large number of http requests when your website visitors want to access a specific file. These requests are handled separately by the visitors ' browser and slow down the website. If you reduce javasThe number of cript and css files will undoubtedly speed up your website. Try all javasCript groupes one and does so for all css files. This will reduce the total number of http requests. There are many tools that can rapidly shrink HTML, css and javasCript file. For example, you can use will peavy, sCript minifier or grunt tools。
6. Use of website caches
If a large number of users access the pages at the same time, the server works slowly and requires more time to deliver the pages to each user. Cache is the process of storing the current version of your website on the host and showing it until your website is updated. This means that the web page will not be presented over and over again for each user. The cache page does not need to send database requests each time。
The method of cacheing the website depends on the platform for the development of your website. For example, for wordpress, you can use the following plugins: w3 total cache or w3 super cache. If you use a vps or a dedicated server, you can also set a cache under your general settings. In the case of shared servers, website caches are usually not available。
7. Achievement of gzip compression
Gzip compression is an effective way to reduce file size. It minimizes http requests and reduces server response time. Gzip will compress the file before sending it to the browser. On the user side, the browser compresses the file and displays the content. This applies to all files on your website. You can use gzip on your website by adding some code lines or using a practical program called gzip。
8. Database optimization in cms
Database optimization is an effective way to improve performance. If you use the content management system (cms), which contains complex plugins, the database size will increase and your website will run slower. For example, wordpress cms stores comments, blog articles and other information that occupies a large amount of data storage. Each cms needs its own optimization measures and there are many specific plugins. For example, for wordpress, you can consider wp-optimize。
9. Reduction in the use of web fonts
Web fonts become very popular in website design. Unfortunately, the use of web fonts has a negative impact on the speed of page rendering. Web font adds additional http requests to external resources. The following measures will help you reduce the size of the network font traffic:
10. Test 404 errors
The error means "no page found". This information is provided by the host to the browser or search engine when the page's access content no longer exists. To detect and correct 404 errors, you can use a bug detection tool and plugin. As we have mentioned, the additional plugins will have a negative impact on the speed of your website, and we therefore recommend that resources be run through external tools for error detection. For example, xenu's l, & sleuth, google webmaster tools and 404 redirected plugin for wordpress。
When all 404 errors are detected, you need to assess the flow they generate. If these dead links do not bring any more access and therefore you will never consume your server resources, you can keep them as they are. If there are still some traffic on these pages, consider re-orienting the external link and repairing the internal link address。
11. Reducing reorientation
Re-direction of the website creates additional http requests, which have a negative impact on performance. We suggest that they be kept to a minimum or completely eliminated. First, you should identify all redirections on the page by running site scans. You can quickly identify re-direction using screening frog. Then you have to check whether they are used for the necessary purposes, leaving only the key。
12. Use of pre-emptive technology
Prefeiting requires that the command be read and executed before the user starts the command. The technology is quite widespread. It works well if you can predict user operations, such as loading certain contents or links in advance. Usually, modern browsers defaultly allow pre-utilisation because they assume a user behaviour pattern. However, ux experts and engineers are more likely to be aware of user behaviour and to provide the browser with a “tip” to pre-take。
Pre-emption consists of three main types:
Dns prep. This will require early interpretation of the domain as an ip address。
Link pretakes. If you are sure that the user will click a specific link to navigate to a page, you can apply this type of advance. This method is very useful for stable user travel operations, for example by moving to the shopping cart page after adding one or more items。
Rendering. This means pre-disguising the entire page or some of its elements。
While the advance is effective, it requires an in-depth analysis of user behaviour to make accurate assumptions。
Conclusions
Currently, typical users want the web page to be loaded for less than 3 seconds. If you do not meet this expectation barrier, you will lose a large amount of website traffic, thereby losing your income。
We therefore recommend that a simple and efficient method of website speed optimization be applied:
Review and assess key factors for the success of the website and consider conversion, visibility and availability。
Tests the speed of your current website and prioritizes the pages and functions that require the most attention according to these three factors。
Starts with your optimization in the most able to reduce speed and focuses on the pages that best define your conversion success。
