Websites that are slow often have low conversion rates, low page views and high bounce rates. A slow website will cause people to bounce off as they don't have the patience to wait for pages to load. Let's first find out what page speed actually is before we get into the importance of it.

What is Page Speed?

Page speed is often confused with site speed. It refers to the speed at which a page loads on a website. It can be either the time it takes for a browser to get the first bit from a webserver or the time it takes for a page to display all its content. Google Page Speed Insights This is a powerful tool for analyzing page speed.

Page Speed Insight Tool

What is the importance of site load time?

We all like pages that load quickly. However, we can all agree that slow loading pages are frustrating. Website users are very concerned about page speed. However, it is important that website users understand how slow pages actually load. Let's look at some data to understand why this is important.

A 2018 study by Google revealed that more than 50% of mobile device users leave a website, which takes longer than 3 seconds to load. The same study found that mobile websites load in an average of 15 seconds. Another study by Mach Metrics showed that most of the websites take somewhere around 8-11 seconds to load. It may not seem like a long time, but every second you delay losing customers or visitors, it is.

Also, Conversion rates are affected. Walmart, for example, revealed in a study that every second of improved page speed resulted in an increase of 2% in conversion rates. Google introduced page speed optimization to ensure a great user experience. New speed algorithm In 2018, page speed is an important consideration for website owners and marketers.

It is possible to increase page speed. It's not difficult to solve. It's easy to determine why your websites are loading slow and what you can do to improve their speed.

How can you speed up your website?

These are some tips to speed up your website.

Optimize Images You should ensure that the images you use on your website are in the correct format and size. PNG files work well for graphics that have less than 16 colors, while JPEG images work great for photos. Make sure they are properly compressed for the internet.
CSS sprites can be used to create a template for images you frequently use on your website. CSS sprites combine all of your commonly-used images into one image, which loads quickly and requires fewer HTTP requests. The program then displays only the sections you wish to display on your website. This reduces page loading time as users don't have to wait for multiple images to load simultaneously.

Make use of the Content Distribution Network Also known as content distribution networks, content networks (CDNs), are networks of servers that distribute the content to a website's pages. To put it simply, your website copies are stored in multiple data centers located at different geographical locations so that your visitors can quickly access your pages.
Use Browser Caching to Your Advantage Many types of information are stored in web browsers, including images, style sheets and JavaScript files. Browsers do not have to reload your entire website every time a visitor visits it. Tools such as YSlow can help you determine if your cache expiration date is set. Once you have this information, you can modify your "expires” header to adjust the length of the cached information.
Server Response Time Boost: Your server response time is affected by factors such as the amount of traffic to your website, the web hosting service you choose, the type of server you use, and the applications you use. You can improve your server response speed by identifying performance issues such as slow routing, slow queries to the database, and insufficient memory. Server response time should be within 200ms.
Eliminate Render-Blocking JavaScript: Before rendering a webpage, web browsers must create a document object model tree (DOM) by HTML parsing. Your web browser must stop and execute any scripts encountered during this time.
Reduce Redirects When a page redirects to another web page, visitors must wait a few seconds longer for the HTTP request response cycle to complete. If your mobile-specific redirect model looks like this: XYZ.com> www.XYZ.com> m.XYZ.com> m.XYZ.com/home then two additional redirects will increase page load time and ultimately decrease page speed.
Minify JavaScript CSS & HTML Optimizing your code can dramatically increase page speed. Optimizing your code can include removing commas, spaces, and other unimportant characters, as well as code comments, formatting, and removing unused code. Google Recommendations HTML Minifier for HTML and CSS Nano to CSS. Uglify JS is for JavaScript.
Enable compression: Use applications like GzipTo compress files and reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files greater than 150 bytes. Gzip is not recommended for image files. Instead, use Adobe Photoshop to compress images. These programs allow you to control image quality.
Tools to check how fast your site loads

These are some popular tools that you can use to check the speed of your website:

Page Speed Insight
Pingdom
GTmetrix

DnR IT Solutions is a web development and SEO Services in London that has won numerous awards. We do everything possible to make sure your website loads quickly. We can help you optimize your website, whether you're looking to develop a new site or improve your current ones.