How to Speed Up Your Website and Make it Load Faster – A Beginner’s Guide
Websites are the first interaction point between your brand and potential customers. As such, they need to be fast, smooth, and responsive. According to a report by Akamai, the average website response time is just under 2 seconds. Anything over this is a red flag for visitors who will leave your site in under 10 seconds if it is too slow. Many factors affect the loading speed of your website – from file sizes to server locations to CDN usage. Google also recently announced that page load speed would be a ranking signal in their new mobile-first index. In this blog post, we will cover everything you need to know about making your website load faster and getting a speed boost on search crawlers like Googlebot.
Why is website speed so important?
When a visitor lands on your website, they expect to be able to consume the information as quickly as possible. If they wait too long, they will leave your site and go to a different one. This affects your sales, conversion, brand image, and overall business. If your site takes too long to load, you get less traffic and lower engagement rates then you should hire a digital marketing agency in Dehradun According to a study by Akamai, even if your pages load at 4 seconds, you get 64% less engagement than if they load at 2 seconds or less. When your site is slow, you have fewer opportunities to convert visitors into customers.
How to make your website load faster?
You can improve your site’s speed by following these simple steps:
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network or CDN is a network of servers designed to deliver content (e.g., images, videos, audios, etc.) as fast as possible. They cache your website files on multiple servers strategically placed across the world. When someone accesses your website, the files are delivered quickly and efficiently from the nearest location.
They are a good option for websites with high traffic and need to load faster. With a CDN, you can host large media files (e.g., images, videos, music, etc.) on their servers, so you don’t have to host them on your servers. You can reduce the server load and improve your website speed.
Compression is key
All content on the internet can be compressed to reduce its file sizes. This means you can host your media files on your servers and compress them before uploading. This way, you reduce the file size and improve your website speed. You can compress your images using online tools such as Compressor.io.
Another way to compress your images is to use a tool like Photoshop and select the JPEG format. The JPEG format compresses your images and reduces the file size. You can also use the JPEG fine setting to reduce the file size even more.
Hosting and Domain Names Matter
Bad hosting can slow down your website and negatively affect your search engine rankings. Most hosting providers will promise you speedy hosting, but they mostly overstate their strengths. You should conduct honest research on different providers and review their speed.
When selecting a hosting provider, look at their network speed and uptime records. They should be confident about their resources and ability to provide you with the service you need.
Domain names are just as important as hosting providers. You’re missing out on conversions if you’re using a domain name irrelevant to your brand. Although you can’t make your website load faster by changing your domain name, it can significantly affect your bounce rate and conversion rates.
Web hosting: The foundation of a fast website
When you host your website on a server, the connection to that server is not instantaneous. Even if your website is hosted in the same city as your visitors, it will take time for data to be transferred across networks. This is called latency, and it’s a serious issue when it comes to website speed.
In order to make your website load faster and make your visitors happy, you need to host your site on a server close to where your visitors are. The closer the server is, the faster the data is transferred. This is why you need to find a web hosting provider that offers servers near your visitors.
HTML and CSS code optimizations
The words on your website are important, but not as much as how they’re delivered. There are many ways to improve the loading speed of your website, starting with the HTML and CSS code. Many websites offer free optimization services like CodePen and CSS-Tricks.
You can also optimize your website by decreasing the file size of your images. Select pixelated images for the website instead of blurry images. You can even use tools like Canva to create striking images for your website.
Responsive images
The quickest way to make your website load faster is to resize all your images to a specified width and height. If the image is too large and takes a long time to load, you can scale it down to the correct size. Doing this reduces the file size and improves your website speed.
JavaScript implementation
JavaScript is a programming language and a scripting standard used to create interactive and dynamic websites and applications. Most modern websites rely on JavaScript to function properly, but it can also slow down your website. You can make your website load faster by including the JavaScript at the end of your page, not the beginning. This way, your page can load faster since the page does not have to wait for the JavaScript to finish loading before loading the rest of the page.
Conclusion
A slow website is frustrating for users and can affect your brand. Luckily, there are many ways to speed up your site and make it load faster such as connecting with a digital marketing company in Dehradun. You can use a CDN to host your media files, compress your images before uploading them, and host them on a server close to your visitors. You can optimize your HTML and CSS code, use pixelated images, and include JavaScript at the end of your page. With these simple tips, you can make your website load faster and impress your visitors.
