Imagine this; you are a little kid again, sitting at your desk, waiting for your computer to power up. Remember how long it took. A couple of minutes at max, right? But remember how tediously long those few minutes seemed back then? Well, that’s exactly how people feel about web pages these days. In this read we will highlight the importance of website speed optimization.
It takes a mere few seconds to load any website or web page, but the consumer traffic is affected by every 0.001-second difference. Research by Google states fast-loading websites have 35% lower bounce rates on average.
Basically, what happens is that all search engines like Google value websites and web pages on numerous prospects on the basis of which their search engine ranking is determined. Google ranking factor is one such example that uses algorithm-based rankings to decipher the quality of a page or site. Higher the ranking, the more consumer traffic it brings.
Metrics for Gauging Page Loading Time:
In general, page loading time is the time taken by the web page from being clicked on (on the search engine) to fully render and become functional.
Due to the quintessential importance of bounce rates (the percentage of people that visited your website and left without clicking on any links or taking any kind of action), search engines, especially Google, have a system or a standard to measure the loading time of any website.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a platform that you can use to figure out the loading time of your web page. There are other tools available in the market as well, such as Pingdom Website Speed Test, which is an easy-to-use option for first-timers. Another beginner-friendly option is to use GTmetrix.
Once you’ve figured out how long it takes for your website to load, you can work towards making it more efficient.
Website Loading Time for Mobiles:
Interestingly, the loading time of web pages is different for mobile phones and computers. When maintaining a website, it is integral that your loading time is minimum on both mobile phones and desktops. Only then conversion rates will increase, and bounce rates will decrease.
According to research conducted by Google and Deloitte, approximately 53% of users bounce after a 3-second delay on mobile phones. The faster mobile sites earned almost double the revenue of sites that took more time to load.
To allow a steady flow of consumers, website owners need to realize an important matter which is that the user requires efficiency in all areas of life, and so to make any customer or consumer loyalty, it is integral to optimize the loading time of web pages on mobiles as well as computers.
Reasons Why Your Web Page May Suffer from Slow Loading Time In 2023:
While building a website, we try to make the best, most unique, and enchanting web page to bring in as many users as we can appeal to. However, this may sometimes backfire by making the loading time of our website a little slower.
1. Web Design:
Web developers often design websites in a way that allows for the maximum user interface; this, however, impacts the loading speed of the page. The coding and algorithms used to formulate the website may be great, but the increase in loading time will be inversely proportional to user traffic.
2. Media Files on the Web Page:
Naturally, if a site contains only written content, it will load faster than one that has pictures or videos as well. To optimize loading time, we can not completely remove pictures and/or videos, but there are ways to manage them by using synchronous or asynchronous loading methods, depending on which works best with your web page. Image compression and use of optimal images is the most important part of website speed optimization
3. Backlinks and themes:
The number of hyperlinks and backlinks installed throughout your website directly affect the speed of loading. This, combined with the specific themes used on your web page, makes a huge difference in website loading time.
Having talked about all these things, you may ask, how do I lower my website’s page load time? Well, let’s get right into it!
Best Ways to Lower Page Loading Time:
To better the speed of your website, there are multiple factors that are involved. Tinkering with each aspect individually will not yield significant results, but collectively, a great difference can be observed in the website’s loading time.
Bear in mind that each page and site differ from one another and so require tailored manufacturing of its constituents.
Web Hosts and Content Delivery Networks:
It is pivotal to use a good site delivery system, whether you use a traditional web hosting company or a content delivery network. It is important to know which one works best for your website.
Traditional web hosting is based on a single server only, while a content delivery network integrates a wide variety of hosts all over the world.
Depending on the reach you want, you can decide which of the two is more acquitted for you.
Using Corresponding Hyperlinks Avoiding Broken Links:
Link building is a popular SEO technique that requires connections between similar online entities. With that being said, these things affect the loading speed of the web page. It is vital to keep a close eye on them because sometimes link chains get broken, which means they become useless to the value of the website and hence only slow it down.
A constant check will alleviate these risks.
Compressing Media Files:
As mentioned above, picture and video content largely affect the loading speed of a website. To combat this without having to remove the media files from the site, we could use loading strategies and tools that help compress the files without dropping their quality.
Gzip is a tool that might aid in data compression along with WP Smush.
Check to See If Your HTML is Bloated Or Not:
A Hyper Text Markup Language is like a DNA sample of your website. When someone clicks on your link to open your website, this genetic markup tells the server how many files there are. Then the server sends each file separately to load and configure on the consumer’s screen. If your HTML pages contain 5,000 or 6,000 lines of code prior to any content on the page, you’re looking at bloated HTML.
Allow Caching:
Web caching and browser caching are two effective ways to decrease the load time of a website. Caching works by lowering the TTFB (time to first byte). It keeps copies of your web page’s files that are sent to the server every time your page is supposed to open, allowing the server to take less time to generate the page in front of the user, ultimately decreasing load time.
Browser caching works similarly where it stores slay sheets and media files so that they require reloading every single time.
Sweeping the Database and Media Library:
It is an often-neglected modem, but it is still highly effective in managing the loading speed of a web page. Doing a regular cleanup of the website’s database will remove all unutilized content. Data optimization also frees the server from unwanted file loading.
Likewise, doing a media library clean sweep occasionally, will render you’re your website loading faster than ever before.
Get free advise on how to maintain your website and make sure it loads fast.
