It’s a foregone conclusion that
sluggish websites don’t make for happy visitors. In fact, a U.K. study
by Brand Perfect discovered that 67 percent of consumers abort their
purchase because of slow loading times. That’s reason enough to speed up
your website.
But there is another reason to
make sure that you are doing everything you possibly can to speed up
your website. Google has stated that the faster your site loads for the
user, the higher it will rank it on its search engine index.
Customers are kings in today’s
competitive market, and with a banquet of choices available to them,
they are less tolerant of slow loading pages. Here is a look at some of
the steps you can take to make sure that you are not driving away your
customers.
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| Five Ways to Speed up Your Website Blogger |
1. Get Rid of the Unnecessary Plugins
There are so many tempting and free plug-ins available to webmasters today that it is easy to find yourself adding more plug-ins than you really need. However you should know that the plug-ins can weigh your website down. Each plug-in you add uses up a little more of your page resources and the page loads a little slower for the visitor. Nike, for instance, severely slows down page load times with images, Facebook and Twitter widget scripts etc. all lend to a complex and integrated but slow site.
There are so many tempting and free plug-ins available to webmasters today that it is easy to find yourself adding more plug-ins than you really need. However you should know that the plug-ins can weigh your website down. Each plug-in you add uses up a little more of your page resources and the page loads a little slower for the visitor. Nike, for instance, severely slows down page load times with images, Facebook and Twitter widget scripts etc. all lend to a complex and integrated but slow site.
Each time you find yourself about
to add a plug-in, ask yourself if your website really can’t do without
it. If the site’s speed is sacrificed for features or functionality, it
has to be worth it. If not, consider ways to code the plug-in’s features
into the theme of your website.
2. Size Images Prior to Upload
If you’re using Joomla or WordPress for content management, then you can adjust the image size after you’ve uploaded it at full size. However you should know that when you do this, you are forcing the website to carry out several commands at once. This can again slow down your website. A solution to this problem is to edit the image to the size you want before you upload it. Use an offline editing program to do this.
If you’re using Joomla or WordPress for content management, then you can adjust the image size after you’ve uploaded it at full size. However you should know that when you do this, you are forcing the website to carry out several commands at once. This can again slow down your website. A solution to this problem is to edit the image to the size you want before you upload it. Use an offline editing program to do this.
3. Allow Browser Caching
If browser caching is not enabled, each time a repeat visitor comes to your website; his or her browser reloads the entire page. If you enable caching on the other hand, the visitor’s browser stores copies of the pages in its cache. This means that each subsequent time the visitor comes to your site, his or her browser will load the page from its cache. This will speed up the load times of your site by significantly bringing down the resources used for your site to load.
If browser caching is not enabled, each time a repeat visitor comes to your website; his or her browser reloads the entire page. If you enable caching on the other hand, the visitor’s browser stores copies of the pages in its cache. This means that each subsequent time the visitor comes to your site, his or her browser will load the page from its cache. This will speed up the load times of your site by significantly bringing down the resources used for your site to load.
You can use a WordPress plug-in
like the W3 Total Cache feature to enable caching. You can also code it
into your website if you know how (consult your Web developer about this
if you have one).
4. Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
CDNs are huge server networks housed in several places around the globe. It’s possible to use CDNs as the storehouses of your content. Amazon Cloudfront is an example of a CDN you can consider for this purpose. Instead of storing images and other resource-hungry content on your Web host server, you can split the resource load. The next time a visitor loads your page, he or she is served the content by the CDN by being linked to a nearby server. This means faster load times and a happy visitor. Don’t make the mistake that 1-800 Flowers made in hosting too many images on its domain, leading to loading speeds of as long as seven seconds.
CDNs are huge server networks housed in several places around the globe. It’s possible to use CDNs as the storehouses of your content. Amazon Cloudfront is an example of a CDN you can consider for this purpose. Instead of storing images and other resource-hungry content on your Web host server, you can split the resource load. The next time a visitor loads your page, he or she is served the content by the CDN by being linked to a nearby server. This means faster load times and a happy visitor. Don’t make the mistake that 1-800 Flowers made in hosting too many images on its domain, leading to loading speeds of as long as seven seconds.
5. Keep the Javascript Code at the Bottom and the CSS Files at the Top of your Page
Untidy code can also slow down website loading times. Make sure that when you’re working on raw HTML pages, you keep it tidy by adding the Javascript codes to the bottom of the page. This will ensure that before loading, your pages don’t have to wait on execution of the full code. Also, ensure you place the CSS codes to the top to prevent progressive rendering.
Untidy code can also slow down website loading times. Make sure that when you’re working on raw HTML pages, you keep it tidy by adding the Javascript codes to the bottom of the page. This will ensure that before loading, your pages don’t have to wait on execution of the full code. Also, ensure you place the CSS codes to the top to prevent progressive rendering.
These are a few simple steps that
you can take to ensure your visitors have a smooth user experience at
your website. There are plenty others and you can always consult your
website developer for more assistance regarding them.
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