7 Ways to Increase Website Speed
Is your company’s website speed not where you want it to be? Increase the speed of your website with these 7 helpful tips and tricks.
Is your site’s bounce rate too high? Website speed might be one of the main culprits behind the problem.
Take a moment to run a website speed test. A majority of people won’t even wait longer than 3 seconds for a page to load. If your pages fail this benchmark, you’ll see people leave before they even see what you offer.
Not sure how to improve website speed? We’ve got your back. Continue reading our list right here to learn seven useful steps to boost site speed with ease:
1. Optimise Images
One of the first steps to increase website speed is to compress the images on each page. Images consume a lot of bandwidth and can easily slow down a site. The simpler your site is, the quicker it’ll load.
However, while compressing them is a priority, you don’t want to ruin their resolution quality either. Low-resolution images look cheap and this could ruin the reputation or credibility of your site. People will judge it by how it looks, after all.
The key to achieve this is to use tools that can compress images without cutting down the image quality. You can use tools like reSmush.it or WP Rocket to achieve this. The best part is some of the high-end tools can compress multiple images across your site simultaneously.
Even after compressing images, make sure you don’t overload your site with too many photo files. Prioritise the ones that matter. Everything else is there for flair and you’ll have to pick functionality over visuals.
2. Reduce Heavy Plugins
You can also speed up website pages by removing unnecessary plugins.
Having a lot of plugins can seem helpful at first. It’s better to remove them if they drag the experience down, however. Some of them might be there simply for convenience-sake so take those out.
At the end of the day, the plugins you prioritise should focus on only two things. The first goal is to make your site efficient and functional. The second is to make your site more presentable.
Plugins installed for convenience are nice but remove them if they consume too much bandwidth. They’re the lowest on your list of priorities.
3. Better Hosting Options
Don’t forget to upgrade your website hosting plan too. If you’re still using a shared hosting plan, it might be time to upgrade to dedicated hosting or cloud hosting.
Upgrading your hosting plan will also improve website security. It’ll also reduce your weekly or monthly site downtime.
If you’re looking for good hosting options, we’ve got you covered. We offered multiple plans, from Virtual Private Servers to managed hosting plans!
4. Turn On Caching
Every time someone visits your website, their browser needs to download multiple elements. The more elements they have to download, the longer it’ll take for the pages to load. You can reduce this waiting period by enabling browser caching.
Caching simply allows the user’s browser to save most of the necessary elements. When they visit your site again, they’ll only have to download the newer elements. This significantly reduces the waiting period.
The good news is enabling caching is as easy as flipping a switch. If you run your website on WordPress, for example, it’s as easy as going to the general settings and then enabling caching.
5. Unnecessary Visual Flair
Just a few years back, many websites tried to outdo each other with more visual flair. You’d find websites using flashy animated backgrounds, image carousels, Flash videos on auto-play, and auto-play ads with music.
The downside is that all these visual upgrades slow a site down. At the same time, there’s too much going on. It becomes too difficult for a site visitor to notice important elements, like a CTA for subscriptions or to buy an item.
It’s too easy to get lost amid all the visual noise.
You should remove anything still running on outdated tools, like Adobe Flash. In fact, using Flash makes your site look old and irrelevant.
6. Content Delivery Network
Let’s say your site’s server is in the UK but you now expanded your reach to consumers in the US. Those visitors will have to access your site via the UK server. That can take too much time since the added traffic will choke the available bandwidth.
One solution around this problem is a CDN aka Content Delivery Network.
A CDN places different access points across multiple locations. Now those consumers in the US can access your website via a server closer to them. This reduces the chokehold and ensures pages load quickly even with the extra traffic.
7. Remove URL Redirects
A redirect is when a URL doesn’t bring a visitor to the intended page but instead reroutes them to a different URL. Most developers use URL redirects when a site has multiple 404 errors or when pages are under maintenance.
These are reasonable excuses for a redirect. However, some people use URL redirects when they get too lazy to update a page and simply redirect people to an updated one. Some developers also use redirects to reroute mobile users to a mobile version of the website.
Run multiple tests on your site and look for existing redirects. If they’re necessary ones, try to list down which ones you can fix and later remove. As for the others, remove them immediately.
Boost Website Speed Today
Improving website speed is one of the major factors in increasing user experience (UX). These seven tips here will ensure you can boost site speed in no time.
People won’t bounce out if they can access the information they need or want in an instant. This will reduce the instances of visitors ditching your site and trying out the competition.
Fortunately, you don’t have to look far and wide for help. We provide multiple hosting options right here. Don’t hesitate to check out some of our hosting packages available right here, today.
