Do you ever click onto a page and instantly click off when you’re met with a white screen? Us too. As technology has advanced we have become an impatient society. We want the information we’re looking for in seconds and if it’s not presented to us, well, we will just click on the next page.
Kissmetrics states that 47%of consumers expect a webpage to load in two seconds and will only stick around for three before they abandon the website. Given those statistics, website speed is extremely important. A few seconds of lag time could have a major impact on the number of people who engage and convert on your website.
We have rounded up the top tools and tricks to ensure your website is working quickly and efficiently.
Front-end developer by Pebri Sumartono
Simple web design is key
A simple website design is not only user friendly, but can increase your site speed. This is because, according to Yahoo, 80% of web page load time is spent downloading all the different elements of the page from images to scripts. An HTTP request (information request from user to server) is made for each of these parts, so the more elements there are, the longer the page takes to render.If you reduce the number of files, you reduce the number of HTTP requests, thus increasing your web page load time.
Install Google PageSpeed Insights and Google PageSpeed
Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Google PageSpeed are a power duo.Insights quickly and easily analyses the speed of your webpage on both mobile and desktop devices. It then scores your pages from 0 to 100, indicating how well your page is performing. Anything 85 or over means you web pages are functioning well.Google PageSpeed then takes this information and manages elements on the page such as CSS and images, to optimise and fix many of the issues identified.
Enable caching
When you’re shopping in town you will often go into multiple store, sizing up what they have on offer, if there are any sales and then comparing them to decide which you should commit to making a purchase from. Online shopping is much the same. Consumers will browse a variety of websites before they convert. Based on this behaviour, we highly recommend that you enable caching on your website.
By enabling this feature you significantly reduce the load time for repeat website visitors. When you enable caching visitors will store the different elements of your website in their hard drive or temporary storage. Then, when they next visit your site, the browser won’t need to send out any HTTP requests,, increasing the load time.
Optimise your images
Images are integral to the visual quality of a website. However, they also play a big part in your website load speed. And, unfortunately, the higher-quality your images are, the longer they will take to load. Even a small reduction in all product image sizes can have a significant impact on the speed of your website. For example, if you have an image that is 2400px wide, but you only need one that is 500px wide, you should resize this before you introduce it to your CMS. This means that your CMS is working with a smaller size from the very beginning, without have to do the grunt work of compressing the image behind the scenes.
This article has been written Splashbox, an innovative digital marketing agency that offers tailored design, marketing and technical solutions.
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