How fast your website loads isn’t on the whim of a madman (Speed). It’s based on the science of algorithms and user data collected by Google. Website speed is part of a good user experience. It helps us do more things faster. Let’s walk through what site speed is, why it’s important, and a handful of ways to improve your website’s speed.
Behind the Scenes with Site Speed
Website speed is a complicated beast. Many things attribute to how fast a website or a page loads, from images, ads, or videos to the design elements and coding behind the website.
Anything you add to your website will slow down the speed of your website.
- Images and logos
- Coding
- Design elements like swooshes, banners,
- Videos
- Anything animated
- Forms
- Text (how it is styled, the fonts, the length)
- Plugins
Some people are tempted to throw everything and the kitchen sink on the homepage – this isn’t a great idea. It’s essential to break it up amongst the pages and above or below the fold. Now, you may be asking, “What does above or below the fold mean?!” Think back to newspapers. Important headlines and information were always above the fold, meaning what readers would see first. It is intended to entice people to buy the paper and read what is written on the other side…below the fold. The most important information of each page should be above the fold:
- Logo
- How to contact you
- Visuals to show your service or product in action
- A tagline to pique the reader’s interest
If any of these things take too long to load, a visitor sees a blank page and moves on. This makes both what you put above the fold and how it’s laid out critical to perceived website speed.
Wait, perceived website speed?! Yes. There is also actual performance and perceived performance. Actual speed can be measured by various free or paid programs; perceived speed refers to how visitors think your website is working. You can take steps to improve both.
Why Speed is Important
Before we talk about how to increase your website’s speed, here’s a handful of reasons why speed is essential.
- It won’t blow up the bus. While Google’s guidelines for website speed are 3 seconds or under, each industry will have its own best loading time. Visitors expect more from some sites and others they don’t mind ‘waiting’ for.
- It won’t kill the hostages. In this case, your SEO ranking is held hostage on the speeding bus. A slow load time will tell search engines your website probably doesn’t have the information visitors need and will rank it lower and lower into oblivion.
- It helps tourists have a great time. Visitors to your website will have a better experience if they don’t have to wait for things to load.
- The driver will remain in control. With a quickly loading website, conversions will be higher and sales will increase.
Now, let’s get into a few ways you can improve your website speed!
How to Speed Up Your Website
Most of these tips you should be able to take care of yourself. They range from simply asking the right questions to taking intentional action to hire someone to help you. As you consider the many elements of your website, ask yourself these questions to know if you should keep something or lose it:
- Is it (plugin, image, design element) worth it?
- Does it align with my biggest goals?
- Will it benefit my conversion rate?
1. Image Size and Quantity
One of the biggest yet easiest ways to control site speed is how many images you have on the site. Are they optimized for the web? Do you have a few images or endless galleries for people to scroll through? Keeping your images optimized for the web and limiting how many you have will help your website speed.
2. Page Layout
This is also important. Page layout aids in user experience because the information follows an easy-to-understand progression. Though they take longer to load, images break up the text, allowing the text to be better absorbed. Text is ready almost instantly, so perceived performance will be higher. Animations such as gifs will add pizzazz but require a lot of bandwidth, slowing down your website. Use them sparingly!
3. Fonts
The font(s) used on your website should be clean and easy to read. Avoid the delight of using multiple fonts across your website. 2-3 at maximum are good. Ideally, one font is used for all headers with a second font for the website body. Occasionally, a third font can be used for special popouts.
4. Plugins
Plugins are meant to make managing your website easier. But sometimes, they just weigh the website down. Limit how many you use, and do regular house cleaning on them. Some are not all they promise to be. Some start great but lose their effectiveness. When looking at your plugins, ask yourself what you need the plugins for. How important are they to your goals? Are there any which are no longer needed? Look for ones which do multiple things, such as one plugin which manages posting to all social media platforms instead of multiple plugins which only do one.
5. Videos
Videos are a great way to quickly showcase your product or service in action. However, loading the video directly onto your website will slow it significantly. Hosting videos on an external platform like YouTube or Vimeo will free your website to play them faster because it isn’t also trying to load them.
6. Missing Files
Your website runs on files. These files could be images or the CSS housing your design and functionality. If these files become lost, requests to view them take longer and could leave a visitor frustrated. Do regular checks to make sure no images or files are missing so it won’t take so long for the computer request to be fulfilled. Hand-in-hand with this is keeping your file sizes smaller so they don’t take as long to load. Keep your website clean, and it will perform well for visitors.
7. Code
All websites have some form of code running in the background. Some web-builders have bloated code which slows down website performance. Bloated code just means it’s extra and not really needed. Your website will take longer to load the more code it has. There are ways to optimize your CSS (code which describes how HTML elements will be displayed). The code can also be minified by removing unnecessary elements to increase site speed. This can be easy enough if you know what you’re doing but would be a great thing to have a knowledgeable programmer do.
8. Content Delivery Network (CDN)
All websites live on servers. The physical location of the server can impact how fast your site loads. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) stores copies of your website on servers across the country and world. This helps visitors access your website faster because they don’t have to wait for their request to travel all the way to the actual server your website is on. It can also assist during times of high-volume traffic! The first step is to make sure your server has the capabilities to use a CDN. Then you may want help setting one up so it works properly. Cloudflare is a great place to start.
9. Mobile Optimization
We talk a lot about mobile-first programming. Optimizing your site for mobile will help it load faster. It is also something you’ll generally want to hire a programmer to do.
Improving the speed of your website is a continuous process of monitoring and testing to get it faster. While you can make many of these improvements yourself, if you need help to put any of these into action, our team is here to help. Connect with us to see how to improve your website speed.