Unless your site is very fast and efficient you run the risk of losing a huge percentage of traffic. With resources being available in abundance, internet users expect fast rendering of your site. If the site loads slow the visitor is likely slip out fast leading to large bounce rate. The other major setback would be loss of organic ranking. Google places extremely high importance to improve their customer experience. In fact, they provide a tool for checking your site speed on different platforms. The tool provides specific insights and actions to improve site performances.
Before we go to the different ways how we can improve site load speed, let’s quickly look at some facts:
A 1-second delay in page load time yields:
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* 11% fewer page views
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* 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
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* 7% loss in conversions (source: Aberdeen Group)
Here are six critical areas you need to watch out for.
Reduce HTTP calls
About 80% of the page load time is spent in downloading the different parts of the page namely images, style sheet, scripts, flash etc. Now separate requests are placed for each part. So, focus on your website design to minimize the on-page components.
Beside you should look at the following points:
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* Optimise the number of different design objects on the page.
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* Avoid images, make use of CSS styles
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* Instead of using multiple style sheets, combine them into one
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* Optimise scripts and place at lower part of code, so that their loading are deferred later
Compression Enabled Pages
A large and engaging web page often exceeds 100 KB size. The pages get bulky and it renders very slow. A great way to minimize the load is to use compression technique.
Compression reduces the bandwidth consumption of the page resulting in faster HTTP response time. One tool that can help achieve this is Gzip. They use a format called gzip format to compress the file. This can reduce download time significantly and the good news is 90% of the brewers support Gzip.
Minimize Server Response Time
For dynamic websites, server responses contribute significantly to page loading or performance of web functionalities. A good server response time must be less or around 200ms. Having a solid hosting service is essential for this.
Depending on the criticality of business offering, you will have to choose suitable hosting provider and package to support your website. A high volume website with critical transactional activities must have their own high end dedicated hosting facilities.
Enable browser caching
When a visitor first time visits your site with clean cache, the browser needs to download all elements and stored in hard drive in a cache or a temporary location. Next time visits would not require download of those elements already in the cache. This avoids unnecessary HTTP calls.
It is important to optimise the site for faster experience for first time user and it is equally important to adopt an appropriate caching mechanism to provide a faster experience for the returning visitors too.
Image Optimization
While images enhance website design and look significantly, it can play havoc in your site performances, if not used right way.
Image optimization involve using
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* Optimum size – use the right size and resolution
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* Correct image format – JPEG is best, PNG is also good, avoid GIF or PNG.
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* Use of Src attribute – not mentioning correct Src attribute could result in unnecessary HTTP calls and increase in load time.
Use of Structured External Style Sheet
It is always advisable to use a combined and external style sheet instead of inline style sheet. Centrally maintained style sheet often produce great web design in terms of uniform look across pages. It also helps in reducing unnecessary duplication of code.
Reduce the number of plug-ins you use on your site
Too many plug-ins often add unnecessary code block to the site. Often free plug-ins are installed at random and left uninstalled. That may lead to security and technical issues beside performance fall.
Unless you are very sure of the plug-ins you use, avoid any doubtful and unnecessary plug-ins.
Reduce redirects
Unplanned and unnecessary redirects can cause excessive HTTP calls and increase page load time. Review and remove all redirects barring the essential ones.
So, not only is having great website design important, but making the site perform to your client’s expectation is critical.
So, not only great website design is important, making the site perform to clients expectation is critical. To have a great optimized website, it is always advisable to consult a reputed digital agency to help you out.
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