Benefits of Website Speed Optimization: 7 Proven Optimization Tips

Speed is a necessary entity of your website. If you want better visitor engagement on the website then boost the speed of your side. A second delay can reduce the page views. A slow page can decrease customer satisfaction on your site. Due to this, you may get lost in conversions. If your site is taking a few seconds extra to load, you are losing lots of things. It will affect your visitors and sales. Your web ranking is crucial to getting good traffic. But if the site is slow, you can’t get good conversions from your traffic. If the website speed is good, people will love to engage with the site. Most people use only those sites that load within 2 seconds. About 40% of the people close the site if it is taking more time to load. 

Benefits of having good website speed

Better user experience

The main merit of having good website speed is the improved visitor experience. The site speed also affects the Google ranking but the main thing is user experience. People often put great effort into creating attractive websites using top content, graphics, etc. But nothing will work if the site is slow. The main thing every person notices of the website is the speed. A fast website means a good user experience and a better conversion rate. For eCommerce websites, speed matters a lot. If the speed is good then only people will make the purchase. Better website speed will provide better results.

Achieve marketing goals

Every person sets certain goals for his website. Poor speed can ruin your market goals. If you want good conversion and less bounce rate then speed up your website. A fast website will help in improving traffic and sales. Every milli-second of website loading is crucial to achieving your marketing goals. No matter what your site is ranking on which page; the site will affect the views. If the speed of your website is more than your competitor’s site then you may get better traffic and conversion from that site. 

SEO 

If you want to get good traffic and brand recognition then site ranking is essential. Your website loading time, bounce rate, and page views affect the ranking of your website. Google focuses on user satisfaction. If the site is slow, Google will rank your site poorly. But when your site is loading the pages fast, Google may rank the site on top pages.

What can make a website sluggish?

Lots of things can make your website slow. The main reason behind the slow website is heavy images. People often forget to optimize the images and add heavy-sized images on the website. These heavy images make the site slow. Your website speed can get affected due to improper redirects. Using an unoptimized web font can reduce the speed of the website. There are lots of other things that can make your site sluggish. 

Top 7 tips to boost the speed of a website

1. Minimize HTTP requests

Most of the web page’s loading time is used to download parts of the webpage like stylesheet, images, scripts, etc. The HTTP requests are made for every element on the page. More on-page components will take more time to render. To improve the speed, check for the ways to reduce the requests. In Google Chrome, you can use the browser’s developer tools to check the number of HTTP requests your website makes. Open the site and right-click on the page. Choose Inspect and hit on the Network option. Go to the name column and for the Size and time. On the left side, you can see the total number of requests made by your website. Now you have to reduce the number of requests to increase the website speed. Check for unnecessary files and remove them.

2. Minify and combine your files

Minimizing the files on the size will help in improving the speed. Start minimizing the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. These files are crucial for the site’s appearance and adding to the number of requests on the site. You can reduce the files by minifying them. After minifying, you have to combine those files. It will reduce the size and number of the total files on the website. This process is crucial when you are using a templated site builder. It allows the user to construct the website easily. But sometimes it builds messy code that slows down the speed of the website. In the minifying process, you will remove all the unnecessary formatting, code, and whitespaces. 

3. Defer Javascript loading

In this process, you have to prevent the JavaScript loading until other elements get loaded. After deferring the files, the rest of the content on the website will get loaded without causing any delay. For WordPress sites, you can use plugins like the WP Rocket plugin to defer the Javascript. For HTML sites, place the call to an external JavaScript file before the body tag. 

4. Use asynchronous loading option

You can increase the website speed by optimizing the ways of loading the page. CSS and JavaScript load in a synchronous and asynchronous way. When the script is loading synchronously, the loading time is more as it will load one at a time. You can load the files asynchronously to boost the speed of your web pages. When the page is loading synchronously, all elements will load at the same time. 

5. Reduce your server response time

One factor that affects the site speed is the DNS lookup. DNS is a server with a database of IP addresses and related hostnames. While entering the URL, the DNS server translates it into the IP address and shows its location online. Check the DNS speed on your site. The DNS report is updated monthly to get better information. If you are using a slow DNS; it will take more time to locate the site. Change to the faster DNS to improve the site’s speed.

6. Reduce time to first byte

TTFB is the time your browser waits to get the first byte of the data from the server. Whenever anyone visits a site, their browser sends an HTTP request to the server. To get the first byte of data, requires DNS lookup, server processing, and response. You can reduce the time by enabling caching. 

7. Select the correct hosting

New website owners often check for the cheapest hosting option. But cheap hosting often provides low speed. When you start getting good traffic, the site starts running slowly. To prevent speed issues, always look for better hosting options.