When it comes down to separate features of your website, its speed is probably in the highest tier of priorities. Why? Well, because on average, people expect for your page to load within 2 seconds and 25 percent of them is bound to leave if your website is slower than that. Even those who stay won’t be patient much longer, which is why you could say that the speed of your website is in direct correlation with its abandonment rate. Simply put, improving your website’s speed also means improving the overall user experience. So, here are four tips that can get you there in no time.
1. Optimize the Images
The first thing you need to know is that the speed of your page depends on the elements it displays. Sure, this means that having a blank page with a few pieces of information displayed would give you an optimal speed, but this really isn’t the way to go. You see, apart from being fast, your website has to fulfill some other requirements as well, and most of them are visual. In order to have your cake and eat it too, you may want to optimize images you display. For example, always use a JPEG and PNG format for images (JPEG is preferred). It could also help if you resize the images to make them smaller both in pixels and memory requirement.
2. Choose the Right Host
Another thing you must take into consideration is the choice of the host. You see, not every provider offers the same quality of service. Unfortunately, this is something you usually get to learn the hard way. However, if you are to increase your chances of making the right choice you should first look for a provider with a flawless online reputation (look at forums and reviews). Second, you should look for someone who is geographically close to your headquarters. In a scenario where your business is based in Sydney, you don’t actually have to look for a NSW based host, but you should at least look at companies offering web hosting in Australia.
3. Lower the Number of HTTP Requests
Even though it may be visually pleasing to have many different elements on your website, from a technical standpoint this is a disaster waiting to happen. You see, every image, script, Flash animation, and stylesheet require its own HTTP request. Needless to say, this makes rendering much slower and therefore makes your website harder to load. In order to deal with this, there are several things you can do. You could start by using CSS instead of images, combining more style sheets into a single one and of course streamline the number of elements your website uses. All in all, this isn’t that hard to do, even as a complete layman.
4. Reduce the Number of Plugins
A myriad of available plugins is the winning trait of WordPress, but this can sometimes get out of hand. Every time you install a plugin, your site gains a feature, but it also becomes a bit slower. Because of this, you need to reduce the number of plugins you use by learning how to prioritize. Of course, not each of these plugins is harmful for your site’s speed, which is something you should test before making a final decision. Try selectively turning them on and off again to see just how big of an impact they make.
Conclusion
Regardless of how much you have invested in your website, you need to learn how to take care of it if you expect it to run the way you always intended. The abovementioned four tips are just the tip of the iceberg of all the things you can do in order to give your clients smoother and faster experience while browsing your site.
