4 Steps to Speeding Up Your Website

It’s a fact, the time it takes for your web pages to load affects your bottom line. Yes, every second counts for browsing customers with recent studies finding that load time has a major impact on conversions. In short, slower load times result in a higher rate of page abandonment, a statistic that spells disaster for businesses with out of date, slow running websites.

The web browsing experience shouldn’t be an arduous task. Think back to your own online dealings with brands and the frustrations that become apparent when you experience slow load times or worse that infamous spinning wheel of death. Finding out the fate of your website’s speed is easy, with resources like PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test and GTmetrix analysing the performance of your website and scoring you accordingly, but what are some of the alterations you can make to your website to change its fate?

• Reduce the number of HTTP requests

HTTP requests are integral to your website; everything you see on screen is delivered by individual requests being made to your server from the browser. For image heavy web pages, HTTP requests are in abundance with a separate request needed for each and every image. Reducing the number of HTTP requests being sent from a page is a great step to speeding up the page and the wider site. For websites with tons of images to display, groups of images can be converted into CSS sprites, meaning just one request is needed for the set.

• Minify CSS and JavaScript

Whether your website is built using CSS or JavaScript, each and every bit of code contributes to the size of your web page. The bigger a web page is, the longer it will take to load, that’s a fact, but by minifying certain elements you can reduce the length of the code and the size of the page for better load times. Removing unnecessary elements such as indentations, extra spaces and line breaks can condense long reams of code into neat and easy to load packages.

• Remove render-blocking JavaScript

For websites built using WordPress themes and plugins, render-blocking JavaScript can cause major page speed issues. Render-blocking JavaScript loads before HTML meaning browsers have to wait to view the rest of the page. Removing render-blocking JavaScript and relocating it to the footer is a great way to attain a better page speed score and provide a more fluid customer experience.

• Reduce the number of database queries

Database queries play an integral role in the operation of a web page, but during the design and development process, these calls can put a strain on load time. As well as reducing database queries, replace them with static HTML, which loads far quicker than PHP. External scripts can also be combined, whether they are coded in JavaScript or CSS, for a reduced number of database queries.

There are many more steps that business owners can take to make their website as speedy and successful as possible. Let us take you through the process to help you achieve that perfect score.