The Ultimate Guide To Website Speed Optimization

How do you feel when you visit a website and it keeps on loading… loading… and only loading…? you immediately bounce back… right?

Imagine if the same thing happens same with your website.

People come to your site and because of the slow page speed, they bounce back and never return. It will literally destroy your business. 

There may be lots of reasons behind the slow load speed of the website. 

But, now I am going to give you detailed knowledge about website speed optimization. 

So, let’s get started with website speed optimization. 

Read More: How Does Page Speed Affect SEO And How To Improve It?

Why Does Page Speed Matter?

This is the first and foremost important question, why does page speed matter this much? 

Well, let’s understand the concept a little deeper. 

Much research has shown that a user will only wait for 0 to 3 seconds to fully load a website. If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, the user will definitely bounce back. 

Websites that are faster, usually have lower bounce rates, higher conversion rates, and higher rankings in SERP. 

And, the reason behind this is, such website owners, take care of their customers. They think about their customer’s user experience and make sure it is appealing. 

All and all, your site speed can cost you your customers. On the other hand, if your site speed is fast, it has a chance to bring you more customers.  

What Is A Good Site Speed?

So, now you have understood why is page speed important, now it’s time to understand what a good site speed is…

As I have mentioned above, the user will only wait for 3 seconds to load your website. That means, your website must fully load within the 3 seconds. 

These are the recommendation about the core web vitals you must aim to achieve:

No, let’s understand what actually affects the site speed:

What Affects The Site Speed?

There could be a number of reasons why your site is loading slowly. Some of the reasons could be:

• Usage of JavaScript and CSS
• A bad server/hosting strategy
• Size of large picture
• Utilizing no cache in the browser
• Too many plugins and widgets
• Hotlinking from sluggish servers for pictures and other resources
• Traffic flow
• Obsolete browsers
• A network connection is slow (mobile devices)

Of course, there is N number of reasons behind the slow site speed but there are steps that you can take to optimize the site speed.

Below, you are going to learn about how can you improve the site speed.

Best Practices To Improve The Site Speed

So, you have seen what affects the site speed, but here are many ways, with them you can improve the site speed.

Check out below: 

Use CDN (Content Delivery Network)

99% of businesses outsource this part of someone else and then, there are services designed for this: Content Delivery Network.

CDN will optimize your static file like CSS, images, fonts, and javascript for your visitors. And, it is also very easy to set it up. 

You must understand that CDNs are geographically distributed. That means some of the things like images will remain the same, no matter from which location the user is opening your website.

Move To Better Hosting Services

The hosting service that you choose directly affects the speed of your website. If you use a shared hosting service, then of course your website speed is going to be affected very badly. 

If you are using WordPress, then you must upgrade your service plan. Choose managed service. 

Here are the options that you can choose for hosting services:

1. Shared: This is the traditionally used hosting service, in which you share your hosting space with others as well. It has many disadvantages as well, like, it could be one of the reasons you have low site speed. 

2. VPS: It is a virtual private network and significantly faster than shared hosting services.

3. Dedicated: With a dedicated server, you rent a whole machine for your own website. And, of course, it is one of the most expensive services of all. 

So, make sure you choose the perfect hosting service plan for your website. This is also one of the techniques for optimizing website speed.

Optimize The Image Size Of The Website

If your website has high-resolution images, it is going to slow down your website for sure. 

Let’s say, if you have used 2x or 3x resolution of images, displayed well on high-density displays… but your users are not using such high displays or they have slow mobile data connections, then it will definitely it will affect the website performance. 

If you use the right type of image size on your website, it will improve the user experience and speed as well. 

Read More: Everything You Need To Know About Image Optimization

Reduce The No. Of HTTP Request

HTTP requests are done by web browsers to get information about different parts like images and scripts from web servers. If you have a lot of requests waiting in the queue, some of them may be stopped if the line is too lengthy since browsers often have a restriction on the number of concurrent network requests.

So, you should eliminate these unnecessary requests first. Then, check out the minimum render time your website takes and load only the necessary external resources.

You must remove unnecessary images, javascript, fonts, etc. also remove the unnecessary plugins if you are using WordPress. They often load unnecessary load additional files on the page.  

Reduce The No. Of Plugins

Plugins are used as additional features in CMS like, WordPress. Sometimes, it is in-built into other website platforms. 

Plugins are useful as it gives additional features to the CMS. but, sometimes, plugins can cost the website speed. Each plugin will load additional CSS and javascript files. That’s why some plugins can take much time to load as they require additional processing on the server of each page. 

So, it is suggested that you better go through the list of plugins again and keep only the plugins that you really need. 

Read More: 50 Best Free WordPress Plugins To Boost SEO

Use Website Caching

When many users visit your website at the same time, it can slow down the speed of your website, so in such a case, you should use caching. 

Well, caching is the process of storing and showing the current website version of your site to the user until it is updated again. 

That simply means the page will not be rendered for every user again and again. The cached webpage doesn’t need to send database requests every time.

Depending on the platform your website was built on, there are many methods for caching websites. 

For example, you may utilize the following plugins for WordPress: W3 Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. You may also configure caching in your general settings if you have a dedicated server or a VPS. Website caching is typically not possible when using a shared server.

Reduce The No. Of Java And CSS Files

If your website has a lot of Java and CSS files, it will definitely take a large no. of HTTP requests. These requests cause the page to load more slowly since each visitor’s browser handles them separately.

However, if you reduce the no. of Java and CSS files, it will increase your site speed. 

Try to combine all CSS files and JavaScript into a single file. The total number of HTTP requests will decline as a result. There are several tools available to fast minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. Tools like WillPeavy, Script Minifier, or Grunt are a few examples.

Get Rid Of 404 Errors

You must have seen this 404 error on any website that you have visited.

Let me explain, why this happens…

Well, this message is forwarded by the hosting to search engines, when a user try to visit a page that doesn’t exist. 

You can use some plugins or tools like screaming frog to detect this error.

But, some plugins can also slow down your website, so it is better if you detect this error with an external tool. 

Once you have found all the pages with 404 errors, try to fix them. 

If these dead pages don’t bring you traffic, then simply leave them as they are. But, if there are pages that have traffic, then you must fix them.

Database Optimization In CMS

The most efficient technique to improve performance is database optimization. A content management system (CMS) loaded with intricate plugins causes the database to become larger and your website to load more slowly. 

For instance, the WordPress CMS saves blog articles, comments, and other data that consumes a lot of storage space.

Each CMS has a different set of optimization requirements as well as a unique set of plugins. You may think about WP-Optimize for WordPress, for instance.

Test Website Speed

After implementing all the steps for website speed optimization, now it’s time to test your website finally. 

Now, here are some things that need to be considered:

What to test?

Understanding the behavior of the most important website speed performance indicators helps to precisely identify performance gaps in websites before the search for page speed bumps starts.

Full Page Load Time 

An essential component of evaluating the end-user website experience is keeping track of how long it takes to render the complete page’s content onto the requesting browsers. 

This data informs strategic IT choices on the deployment and improvement of hardware infrastructure for the best possible website performance.

The performance of a website as it grows in size and variety of content can be understood by website owners by routinely checking this performance indicator. 

With this knowledge, webmasters may maintain specialized back-end servers to effectively offer dynamically-loaded content while caching static material in different places, such as a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Geographic Based Performance 

The increased worldwide market reach is one benefit of running an internet business. 

Due to the exact same limitations that restrict client-server connection, however, this reach is not necessarily equally efficient – and hence effective – throughout the world. 

Government regulations, bandwidth restrictions, and technological limits hinder optimal website performance globally, thus website speed and availability tests should be carried out across many places to identify results that have an influence on the worldwide commercial reach of websites.

Conclusion

So, this was the full guide to website speed optimization. Improving website speed is a little challenging, however, with the right technique and strategy, you can do it very easily. 

Always, keep this in mind, it will take time for sure. Website speed improvement is not one day job. 

And, don’t start adding all the strategies from today. Analyze the findings of the monitoring tool, alter the website, and then contrast the performance between the two points in time.

FAQs

1. What is a good speed for a website?

The Google suggested page load time is under two seconds if you need an immediate response: “Two seconds is the bar for eCommerce website approval. Fast is important, particularly when providing customer service.

2. Is the Page Speed optimization Process Expensive?

No, it isn’t really that pricey. Even though the price of page speed optimization will vary depending on the website type (WordPress, static, customized, e-commerce, etc.). Book a 30-minute strategy session.

3. What are some website speed optimization tools?

Popular website speed optimization tools

• PageSpeed Insights
• GTmetrix
• Pingdom
• WebPageTest
• Lighthouse

4. What affects website speed?

The number of resources a website needs to load has a significant influence on how quickly it loads. High-resolution photos, multimedia content, large CSS files, and large JavaScript files all significantly increase a webpage’s “weight” or loading time.