You must take website speed optimization seriously when designing websites. Google and users value speed and will abandon a website if it loads slowly. A slow-loading page provides a poor user experience, and as you know, about 53 percent of mobile users are likely to leave a site and return to the search results if it takes over 3 seconds to load.
Website Speed Optimization Checklist
1. Mobile-friendliness
Having a mobile-friendly website isn’t an option today but a necessity. A website not optimized for mobile-friendliness isn’t sustainable and won’t achieve higher traffic and conversions. To optimize a website for speed, you need to check the site’s mobile-friendliness.
Here are tools to use to check whether a website is mobile-friendly:
If the website is not mobile-friendly, you need to do some design and development work to have a responsive design.
2. Accessibility
Everyone wants to have a website that is accessible and usable to all people, including those with impairments, disabilities, and limitation.
Accessibility is a crucial factor web developers should consider before they start optimizing website pages for speed. If working on a WordPress website, Plugins like Accessibility Suite will come in handy.
3. Use a content delivery network (CDN)
Investing in a content delivery network (CDN) is another way to improve web page loading time. A CDN hosts the media files across a large network in servers distributed in various parts of the world.
In other words, a CDN provides web content to searchers based on their geographical location.
To learn more about CDN, follow the Hosting Column post, What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
4. Server response time
Reducing server response time should be a primary goal when it comes to website speed optimization.
Tools that can help check a website’s server response time include PageSpeed Insights and GTmetic, among others. According to Google, you should aim for a TTFB lower than 200 milliseconds to ensure a faster loading speed and a good user experience.
Here are the steps you can take to improve server response time:
- Use a CDN
- Invest in upgraded server hardware to solve memory issues
- Change how the server prioritizes database
- Update server applications logic
- Suggest a better hosting service
- Reduce resource size
5. Image optimization
While images play a crucial part in a successful website, using large or wrong format files can have a negative effect. As such, you need to ensure that the images on a website are of the right size and format to avoid slowing the website.
Tools like JPEGmini can help compress the images without compromising their quality. However, when compressing the images, you should note the two common types of compression: lossy and lossless.
6. Caching
Caching is another technique you can use for website speed optimization. It involves storing images in a proxy server or browser cache to reduce application requests.
If you choose to cache the images in a proxy server, you need to set up storage for images on several point of presence (PoP) servers. These servers are distributed around the world, and the images are served from the closest servers, reducing the page load time.
7. Resizing
Larger image files slow down a website. This is especially true if a visitor uses a mobile device to access the site. As a web developer, you need to find the balance between file size and quality, and resizing the images is a great way to achieve this. If you must display large images, show a thumbnail. Only load the full image on the user’s request.
8. Delete unnecessary plugins
Plugins are a great way to add new functions to a host program without changing it. However, many unused plugins on a website can lead to serious problems.
Besides the number of plugins, their quality can also impact the website speed. The best approach is to avoid plugins that generate numerous database queries. Only keep the necessary plugins and ensure they are updated.
9. Minimize HTTP requests
To minimize HTTP requests, first, you must determine the number of requests a site makes. Chrome DevTools can help Chrome users see how many HTTP requests the site makes. Once you’ve determined that the site is making many HTTP requests, you can take these steps to reduce them to increase the site speed:
- Delete unnecessary images
- Reduce image size
- Combine CSS and JavaScript files
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files
Depending on the website’s size, keep the number of files between 10 and 30 unless the site is large with lots of content, images, and videos.
10. Minify CSS and JavaScript
While CSS and JavaScript help add functionality to a website, they can make the web page swell in size when used in excess. Unused CSS and JavaScript can become unmanageable and negatively impact a site’s functionality.
Google DevTools has CSS and JS coverage to help identify and eliminate unnecessary CSS and JavaScript. When you remove unnecessary codes like space, comments, and tabs, the file size is significantly reduced, which increases the pages’ load time and improves the website’s performance.
11. Reduce redirects
Redirects are another thing that can slow down a website. Ideally, when a page redirects to another page, visitors need to wait longer before they can get the results.
To reduce redirects, you need first to identify that they exist. Tools like PageSpeed Insights can help scan a client’s website to get a report on all redirects on the website. Remove all unnecessary redirects and leave only the vital ones.
12. 404 errors
404 errors are not uncommon for people with internet access. It indicates that the requested page cannot be found. Having these errors on a website can damage a brand, negatively affect SEO, and lead to a bad user experience. In fact, users who experience broken links on a certain website are unlikely to return to the web pages again.
Dial in your website speed optimization
The benefits of a fast-loading site cannot be overstated. A slow loading means a bad user experience and a lower ranking in search engine results. This shouldn’t be the case, though.
By following the above checklist, you can turn a website into a speed demon, significantly improving their rankings in search results. It will also help build your reputation and lead to more work for you and referrals.
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