You’re browsing a site and it’s loading slow. Your need for information is quickly replaced by a growing sense of impatience. So, you hit the back button and move on to the next Google search result; a site that loads fast.
In the age of instant gratification, slow websites simply don’t cut it. So we can confidently say that your website needs to be fast if it’s going to succeed in today’s competitive online world. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to make your website load faster.
Are you looking for a website development services near Corpus Christi, Texas? Look no further than YellowFin Digital. We can help you get your website load faster in no time!
How to Increase Your Website’s Loading Speed
Your website can be a real business asset, but only if it loads quickly and reliably. If your site has a bad reputation for speed, you could be losing potential customers and revenue.
Many different factors can affect the speed of your website, but let’s look at the top ways to make your site load faster.
Leverage Caching Techniques
Caching is one of the easiest ways to improve site performance. Caching is when you store certain elements of your site on the user’s browser so that it doesn’t have to reload those elements on subsequent pages.
Whenever someone revisits your site, those files are pulled directly from the cache instead of being fetched from the web server they’re hosted on. Using this technique will save bandwidth and decrease server requests on subsequent visits from the same user.
You can enable caching with WordPress plugins, which allow you to set expiration times for each type of content that you want to cache. This way, instead of requesting every piece of content from your server every time a user visits, they will only request new or updated content after the expiration date has passed.
Compress Images
Image files tend to be fairly large and take longer to load than other types of content like text and CSS files. This process removes unnecessary metadata from images and reduces file size without changing the image quality. When someone visits your website, their browser downloads the code for each page to display correctly. With compression, the files will be much smaller.
Any developer providing website development services can revamp your website and optimize the images for lesser loading time without disturbing the quality.
Optimized Mobile Site Design
More than half of the website traffic nowadays comes from mobile phones. To aid this, you need to design a mobile-first website.
Your website must be easy-to-use and load quickly on mobile devices. Make sure that it has a responsive web design to adjust to the screen size of different devices (i.e. laptop, tablet, or smartphone). The entire process of designing a website starts with planning out how it will look on a mobile device.
In a responsive web design, you create a single website that can be used across multiple devices: desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. This design automatically adjusts the size and resolution of your website based on the device it’s viewed on. This means users will have an optimal viewing experience no matter how they access your site.
You should also make sure that you incorporate Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), one of Google’s top suggestions for optimizing websites.
Cut Down the Redirected Pages
A quick way to make your website load faster is to cut down the number of redirects. Every time a browser has to redirect from one URL to another, it creates an additional HTTP request-response cycle and delays the rendering of the page.
In some cases, you may have to use redirects for a good reason. For instance, by migrating your website from one domain to another, you will have to use 301 permanent redirects for the old pages.
Other times, there is no need for redirects. And the longer your users wait, the more likely they will leave your website and go somewhere else. This can be bad for business!
Every time a user clicks on a page and redirects several times before delivering its content, the user loses valuable seconds of their visit. While there is no hard-and-fast rule on how many times an HTTP request should be redirected before it becomes an issue, the better the fewer times you can redirect.
If you are migrating from another domain or changing web hosts, you may need to use redirected pages initially. But you should remove them as soon as possible because they will affect your ranking.
Use Proper Hosting
Hosting matters more than most people think. That’s why it’s recommended to use a dedicated host that can handle all the requests on your site properly, without causing any issues with website speed and uptime.
If you’re on a shared server, your site won’t have enough resources to handle multiple visitors at once. As a result, it’ll take a long time to load and could even go down under heavy traffic conditions. So make sure to discuss this during the phase of website development.
Employ Lazy Loading
Lazy loading is a technique developers use to optimize performance and reduce server load on websites with lots of images or videos by only loading them when needed. This means that instead of waiting for every image to download before showing any content on your site, the sections that the visitors are viewing will load.
When a user scrolls down the page, images further below load as they enter the viewport instead of all at once when the page loads. This speeds up initial page loads and saves bandwidth since images below the fold don’t have to be loaded initially.
You can contact the company offering website development services, asking them to enable lazy loading.
Install Only the Necessary Plugins
Plugins are designed to simplify processes, but if they are not optimized, they can slow down your website significantly. Too many plugins can also cause conflicts, which slows down your website and prevents it from functioning properly.
If you have too many plugins installed, consider removing some or all of them, as this will help decrease loading times considerably and give you a faster running site.
Try to use only those necessary plugins and remove any unnecessary ones.
Use a CDN, if Possible
A CDN is a network of servers spread across multiple locations around the globe.
Using a CDN will help your website load fast for users no matter where they are located in the world. These servers will store a cached version of your website, and when users access your site, they will be served with the nearest server to them.
This method helps make your website load faster as users don’t need to download as much data from far away sources. You can get the help of a website development company to leverage CDN for your website.
Want to work with expert developers offering website development services? Reach out to our team at YellowFin Digital today.
