By naqash 
When was the last time you landed on a webpage, only to wait (what felt like an eternity) for it to open? For today’s fast-lived digital age, speed is most important. A slow website not only frustrates your visitors, but it may also damage your search engine rankings and potential customers. But don’t worry; you don’t need to be a wizard in technology to get your site faster. Here are ten simple tips that boost the speed and performance of your website.
Table of Contents
Understand Your Website’s Current Speed
You would know what things were before you made the changes. Some of the tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom give a snapshot of how well your site loads or performs. Conceptually, it’s like taking your car to a mechanic so he can check it for you to decide what upgrades are needed. It not only gives the speed of the site but also the exact recommendation for improvement.
Optimize Images and Media Files
The most probable culprits when it comes to lagging your website would be images. Large uncompressed images can really slow down your load times. You could compress images without losing any quality by using compressing tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim. Even format will help the situation. For instance, if you have photographs, JPEGs are ideal but for graphics with few colors, PNGs work better.
Use Browser Caching
Browser caching is how you give your website a memory boost. The browser keeps saving elements on your site when a visitor arrives, including images, JavaScript, and CSS files. On subsequent visits to such a site, those elements get loaded from the browser cache rather than downloading them again. Page-load times often improve dramatically for repeat visitors. You can even set up caching rules through your website’s .htaccess file or using plugins if you are working on a platform like WordPress.
Minimize HTTP Requests
Every time your web browser loads a page, it sends multiple HTTP requests to the server for all of the different items: scripts, stylesheets, images, etc. Each adds load time. Reduce where you can. Files should be combined where possible. If you have multiple CSS files, combine them into one. Use fewer elements on your page that trigger a separate request.
Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Now, while you may have lots of distribution centers that stock up on products for the whole of your website in different areas, a Content Delivery Network, or CDN, is like lots of distribution centers for your website’s content. While you may rely on one server to deliver your website’s data, CDNs distribute this data across many servers all around the world. So if you’re visiting from New York and someone’s visiting from London, it’s going to serve your content coming from a server nearest to where each of you are, thereby speeding up load time. Popular CDNs include Cloudflare and Amazon CloudFront.
Enable Compression
Compression is the compression of files on your website to a smaller size, and this means they will take less time to load. The most commonly used compression method is Gzip, although there are others which get applied over files that are being sent from your server to the browser. Many web servers, including CMS platforms, make it quite an easy task to enable Gzip compression, which means compression really does cut down the file size so it takes less time to load.
Optimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
This is just like clutter in a room. It will slow you down the same way cluttered codes may slow down your website. Be sure to eliminate any unnecessary code from your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Minify the remaining portion to reduce the size of the files that need to download, thus making your site faster. You can use tools such as CSSNano and UglifyJS for minification.
Upgrade Your Hosting Plan
Your web hosting service is similar to the foundation of your house. If it’s not solid, everything built on top of it will suffer. Shared hosting involves many other sites that share resources with you, which can degrade your performance. You would want to look at upgrades to either VPS or dedicated hosting in order to be sure your site has the resources necessary to run smoothly.
Keep Your Website’s Code Clean
Clean code is an organized workspace—everything works better. Review and clean your website’s code regularly, delete unnecessary or outdated ones, and you have the option of faster execution and easier management of future updates. Tools such as CodeKit and Prepros can help you keep your codebase tidy.
Monitor and Analyze Performance Regularly
Improve your site’s speed as a continuous process, not a one-time task. Continuously monitor your website’s performance by means of the tools given above and assess their data to identify new areas for improvement. Monitoring your site’s performance will help you catch the issues early so that your site remains fast and responsive.
Conclusion
Speed and performance of your website do not necessarily have to be intimidating tasks. It is rather possible to make your site faster, more efficient, and thus really user-friendly by following these ten tips. Remember: a fast website is not only sure to keep your visitors satisfied but also improves your ranking in search engines. So begin optimizing.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is my website’s speed important?
Your site’s speed impacts the experience of users, rankings in search engines, and the overall performance of the site. The more quickly your site loads, the happier visitors are likely to be and thus can make your ranking on the search engines better.
2. How often should I test the speed of my website?
You should check your website’s speed periodically—at minimum once a month. This will help you spot issues with poor performance quickly and address the issue right away.
3. Can images really slow down my website that much?
Yes, uncompressed images slow your site down considerably. Compression and proper formatting of images will limit the drag on speed.
4. How do I distinguish between shared hosting and dedicated hosting?
Shared Hosting refers to the shared use of server resources along with other websites, which degrades performance. Dedicated Hosting means that you have your own server resources, which improves performance.
5. How can I add Gzip compression to my website?
You can do that using your server’s control panel or use a plugin when you’re hosted on a CMS platform, such as WordPress. Many hosting providers also include Gzip compression in their service packages.
By following these tips, and checking up on your website’s performance, you will be well equipped to serve your visitors fast, smooth browsing.
Relevant Links:
- Integrating Social Media with Your Website for Maximum Impact
- The Power of Social Proof: Why You Should Showcase Social Media on Your Website
- How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search
- How Web Hosting Affects Performance of Your Website
- How to Create a Website That Reflects Your Brand Identity