March 16, 2021
First impressions are important! A slow-loading website is bound to cause a lot of frustration for your visitors. Therefore, it’s important that your website loads quickly. Faster page load speeds lead to higher visitor engagement and conversion rates.
Not only that, but the better your site performs, the better the overall experience is for your visitors. And why wouldn’t you want your visitors to enjoy their online experience with you?
What exactly does website performance optimization mean?
To put it simply, website performance optimization is the process of improving the time it takes for a website page to be fully displayed. The total length of time it takes for the front-end side and the server-side to fully load and generate a web page makes up the “total page load time.” Optimizing both front-end and server-side components is key to improving your website’s overall performance.
Try these website performance optimization tips and tricks.
Images
Oversized images are one of the biggest factors that cause slow page speeds. Be sure to properly size and optimize your images when including them on a page. My favorite tool for compressing images is TinyPNG.
HTTP Requests
Reduce the number of HTTP requests, because the more data that your browser needs to fetch, the slower it will load. Decreasing the number of JavaScript (JS) and CSS files is one way to improve page speed. You can also help things along by making sure to reduce or remove unnecessary redirects and third-party plugins.
Web Fonts
Similarly, web fonts add to the number of HTTP requests. If you’re using a web font, make sure you’re only including the styles needed for your site instead of the whole font family, and keep the number of web fonts to a minimum.
Minification
Minify your HTML, CSS, and JS. This removes anything that’s not needed to load your page. Stuff like white space, new lines, and comments.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of servers around the world that helps make it quicker for your content to be delivered to your visitor, based on where they’re located. Use a CDN to improve page speed and reduce your latency.
404 Errors
A 404 error message is encountered when the desired page cannot be found or no longer exists. Fixing these errors will free up your server so it can be used for other tasks.
Test your website.
Below is a list of handy tools for finding out how fast your website loads and what the potential bottlenecks are. I’d recommend analyzing your website before and after optimization, to see how much of an improvement was made with the optimization process.
In the end, if your website isn’t at peak performance, your visitor is likely to bounce and find what they’re looking for somewhere else. So check out where your site’s web performance is currently at and figure out what is needed to improve it. There are so many methods and tweaks that can be made to improve your website, and these are just a few options that can help you on your optimization journey!
Wish your company had more qualified inbound leads? Focus on your website traffic:
Understanding and Increasing Website Traffic
Other insights you might like
