We live in a time where everyone is in a hurry and expects quick search results. Efficient service means many benefits, incl. better user experience, increase in traffic, conversion, etc. and so website speed and website page load are both essential and mandatory for successful web performance
What is Website Speed and Page Load?
Website speed and website page load are important factors for web page success wheatear you are a business, self-employed or web designers London. Both affect how users interact with the site. They also have an impact on the website’s rank in search engine results pages (SERP).
Google uses site speed for web performance as one of its ranking factors, so improving your website’s speed can help you rank higher in search results.
What is a Good Load Time?
According to the page load time statistics 2023, a good page load is under 3 seconds for websites and 2 seconds for eCommerce but preferably around 1 second. Anything over 3 seconds starts to lose visitors' interest, and anything over 5 seconds will cause them to leave your site entirely. So, it's important to have a fast-loading website if you want to keep conversion rates and your visitors happy & engaged.
15 Tips to Improve Website Speed & Web Page Load
1. Resize & compress images
One of the most common elements extending the website load time is unoptimized images according to web designers London. This mainly applies to the graphics format on the server. By changing the image format, you can save a lot of kilobytes (Kb) and significantly speed up the website load time and site speed. Compress your files with compresspng.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Use Lazy loading
Lazy Loading is a web page loading mechanism whose purpose is to load graphics on the web page only when they are needed. Get your page to fully loading by avoiding unnecessary files.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Avoid large videos
This can be troubled for the server especially when it has bandwidth limitations. Will cause delays or even interruptions in playback. Place the video on an external platform such as YouTube and make it available on the website or use video converters and compression programs to improve website performance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Minification of JavaScript, CSS and HTML
Remove unnecessary spaces, tabs and comments from HTML, JavaScript and CSS files, that are irrelevant. Write your own script and avoid unnecessary characters to increase page load time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Use browser cache
This is the place in the user's device where static elements [data] of the website can be stored. Enable browser cache in the settings - server administration panel. The most popular option is to set the browser cache to .htaccess file. If you using WordPress, you can install the WP Fastest Cache plugin and fix the problem. Helps to cut down on website load time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Control coding
Another factor according to the website speed statistics 2022 that affects page speed is the excess code. PHP and JS scripts, which are not used but are nevertheless loaded and processed by the server/browser. Pay attention to universal website templates, their code is created for a wide range of people, which means a lot of unused code. Avoid installing too many plugins. If you use external resources, it is worth using the rel = "preconnect" attribute in the tag.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Avoiding multiple redirects
Redirect chains can slightly extend the target page load time. Increase user experience and site visitors by avoiding multiple redirects. You can check redirects at httpstatus.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Eliminate rendering blocking resources
The fragment of the page that we see first without scrolling the web page. For WordPress, the best solution is to download the A3 Lazy Load plugin. You can also use the defer and async attributes to eliminate render blocking JavaScript.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. File loading
Files can be loaded in three different ways to improve ranking factors:
- Synchronous loading:
Each file is loaded one by one in order as they appear in the page code.
- Asynchronous loading:
It tells your web browser to load multiple files at once.
- Postpone the loading:
Used when the file is not important to render (the script of the chat module).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) implementation
AMP are essentially web pages that use an optimized framework based on existing HTML in order to streamline the information exchange with browsers, creating a faster and more efficient user experience. AMP “prioritizes the user experience” through the enforcement of restrictions on ads and user interface design.
- Limiting CSS to 75KB
- Limiting JavaScript to 150KB
- Moving all the fluff out of the critical rendering path.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Web hosting
The place where the files of your website are located and stored. Move to a reliable and fast hosting provider like Bluehost or use other networks of servers to decrease website load times for your site visitors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12. Compression Gzip, Deflate or Brotli
These are methods that compress the website files without any loss. Recommended to compress text files HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML and fonts that could be reduced by up to 70-80%. You should not compress already compressed files and photos.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13. HTTP / 2 Protocol
It defines how the browser communicates with the server and how resources are transported between them. Using the HTTP / 2 protocol speeds up page load time, thanks to handling multiple requests simultaneously. In addition, the server has the ability to send files before the browser asks for them. When choosing a web host, we should also pay attention to the version of the HTTP protocol used by the server.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14. CDN - Cloudflare
Content Delivery Network (CDN) helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user. When a website uses a CDN, the user's request is sent to the nearest CDN server, which greatly reduces latency and therefore makes the page load much faster.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15. PRO tip
Update DNS records in the domain panel and reduce the TTL time by 15+ min. As a result, DNS servers will check your domain configuration more frequently and the transition to Cloudflare will be much faster.
What are the Benefits?
The faster your website loads, the lower the bounce rate. If your web page loads fast, you have a better chance of ranking on Google over slow sites that drive high bounce rates. Here are some of the benefits of website load speed from our web designers London:
1. Ranking
It's not hard to notice that page speed is one of the many ranking factors that affect its position in search results. Faster loading speed means greater user experience & satisfaction that will improve website performance and your position in search results.
2. Score
The better the page load time the better the quality score, and the greater the chances of your web page being above the competition, which means also costs less.
3. Bounce
The loading speed will reduce the bounce rate & web performance. Users will stay on your website instead of switching to the competition.
4. Conversion
It goes without saying that the sooner the website loads the sooner the user gets the information, and the more likely he/she will convert. This applies to every channel (organic traffic, advertising, social media, etc.)
5. User satisfaction
Everyone wants the page to fully load as quickly as possible. It is therefore worth making a good impression and delivering a smooth user experience with an optimized website.
6. Page indexation
Google robots crawl and index better on faster pages. It is worth mentioning that robots can skip over heavy sites, thus delaying indexation. Improved SEO is a ranking factor as well for better conversion rates.
Tools to Analyze Website Speed
Tools for web designers London to analyze website speed and website load time:
PageSpeed Insights - a free speed testing tool from Google that allows you to check the loading speed and time of any website. It assesses its speed testing separately on desktop and mobile devices. Shows the results on a scale from 1 to 100, where: 0-49 points (marked in red) are weak, 50-89 (orange) improvement needed, and 90-100 (green) good.
GTMetrix - is one of the speed testing tools you can use to get a detailed report on your web performance and page load time.
Pingdom – is a website load time tool that apart from the list of guidelines and elements affecting the page load time & loading speed, allows you to select the location of the server from which the test is to be performed.
Light House – is a site speed tool by a Chrome browser extension. The audit is divided into 5 segments. Each of them includes personalized guidelines and a separate rating on a scale of 0 to 100 to display page loads.
Google Analytics - If you have a tracking tag implemented in the website code, you can analyze the website load speed of the visited pages. To do this, go to the Behavior -> Site Speed tab, where we can see, for example, the web loading time of individual web pages or the guidelines from the Google PageSpeed Insights tool for each of them.
Other Page Load Analysis Tools
1. DNSpref - tests the website performance of the DNS provider.
2. WebPageTest - the tool analyzes the web page several times, then takes the average result and presents a large amount of information that can be used to improve
loading speed.
3. Google Mobile Speed Test - the focus is on usability analysis for mobile devices.
4. Key CDN Speed Test - the report contains basic information on the page load time & speed.
5. Web.dev - a page speed tool based on Lighthouse - It presents the test results in a slightly different format but is useful to improve conversion rates and user
experience.
Conclusion
You’ve made it through the guide to becoming part of web designers London, congratulation. Now you know how to speed up your website performance and make your page to fully loading in no time. We hope you found at least one useful tip to improve your mobile device loading speed or website load time. Do not forget about optimizing the content for selected keywords and acquiring valuable external links for website speed tests.
