Did you know that an average user can’t wait for more than 2 seconds for a website to load? It means that if your website takes 3 or more seconds to load, there are higher chances that your target audience will leave the website out of impatience. This results in a higher bounce rate and thus lowers your ranking.
The good news is that there are ways to improve the speed at which your website loads. Increasing your load time will help you improve your conversion rates as your bounce rate reduces and ranking goes up higher. Let’s check out some of the hacks that you can use to improve your website speed service.
1. Image Compression
You cannot make a website without images today, yet they are one of the heaviest files on your web pages that make your website heavy. While eliminating the use of images is not an option, reducing the size of those files is. There are plenty of image compressing tools online that you can use for free to reduce the size of the images you use for your web pages.
2. Browser Caching
This is a method to store caches or copies of your website on the visitor’s browser when he visits it. These copies help to reload the web pages faster when the browser opens the website again. Thus, your website will open faster if the user opens it again.
3. Minimizing HTTP Requests &Responses
Every time a user opens or uses a website, the browser sends an HTTP request to the server. In return, the server sends a response the browser. When these requests and responses increase, it tends to reduce the speed of your website.
In order to reduce HTTP requests, you need to optimize your HTML, JavaScript and CSS files. Another option is to open the network tab of your browser and reload the page.
To minimize HTTP responses, you need to use Gzip compression.This code minimizes HTTP responses by 70%. If you’re using a WordPress site, you can use the plugin W3 Total Cache to install the code. Else, you need to update the code on your website.
4. Optimizing Redirects
A redirect will take you to another URL from the one you requested, in case you have been going to an outdated URL or have misspelt it. While it’s important to have them, they do reduce your website loading speed and thus need to be optimized well. Ideally, you shouldn’t have more than one redirect for a single web page.
5. Upgrading Your Web Hosting Plan
As your website traffic increases, you require more bandwidth in order to handle it. You may have started your website with a cheap, shared hosting plan. However, if you see your traffic is increasing and the website loading speed is reducing, it is time to change your hosting plan before your traffic starts going down.
6. Optimizing Your Plugins
Plugins surely make your work easier and add some good features to your website. However, if you have any useless plugins installed in your backend, they’re more of a burden slowing down your website. Hence, you need to delete any plugin that you aren’t using.
7. Using Content Delivery Networks
A CDN or content delivery network is a wide network of servers spread all across the world. When you use a CDN, your site loads from the web host location that is closest to the client browser through cached versions of your website. This plays a major role in improving the speed of your website.
8. Updating Scripts from Time to Time
The code that runs your website is gets updated by the CMS platform that you’re using. These updates will be made available to you on your backend. Do make sure that you keep a backup and keep updating the scripts as and when they’re available to you.
9. Having a Clean Code
A trick to keeping your code clean is by having your CSS files at the top of the page and JavaScript snippets at the bottom. This prevents progressive rendering and full code execution of your web pages, thus increasing the loading time of your site.
10. Preventing JavaScript Loading
JavaScript files are pretty heavy and slow down your website. Thus, you can use the plugin WP Rocket if you have a WordPress site to improve your site speed. An HTML based website will require another code to do so.
I’m Sanjay, a digital marketing professional with 12+ years of experience. I’m also a part-time blogger who writes about various topics. My blog provides practical advice and insights for readers interested in these areas. I’m passionate about sharing my knowledge and always looking for new ways to engage my audience. In my free time, I love traveling and immersing myself in new cultures.