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5 Ways to Improve Your Website Speed

Studies have shown that people are now less patient than they were in the past. This is especially the case when it comes to browsing the web.

By Marie NievesPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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Whether they’re searching for information or browsing products online, people want the website to load quickly. If that doesn’t happen, chances are they’ll leave and turn to another site. Whether you’re running a page for your business or you’re writing a blog, you need to do everything you can to make your website faster. But what are the best ways to do this? Here are five of them you might want to check out.

Optimize your images

There’s no point in designing a web page that consists of nothing but text. Graphics usually make a page look better and can have an impact on the visitors’ decision whether to engage with your content or not. However, if you upload images to your website without optimizing them, it can seriously slow down your website. Most of the time, images take the longest to load, and the reason behind it is that they’re larger than HTML and CSS files. But if you choose to reduce the resolution of your images and compress them, you should be able to make your page load faster. Just make sure you don’t overdo it and affect the quality of the images you’re using.

Rely on browser caching

Another thing you might want to include into your arsenal when improving website speed is website caching. Why make your visitors download everything every time they want to access your website? All you need to do is enable browser caching and your visitors will start saving the data from your website to their computers. This means that the next time they enter your site, the page will load much faster. This also results in an improved SEO ranking and increased user satisfaction, which is exactly what you’re aiming for. Many people worry that if their content changes, it won’t appear for the users who’ve already downloaded their cache. However, there’s a mechanism that empties and regenerates the cache when new content is published.

Opt for local web hosting

According to reports, locally hosted websites load three times faster than those hosted by an international company. This is an important thing to have in mind, especially if you’re a small business owner and you’re looking to attract as many local customers as possible. Therefore, it’s recommended to work with a host from your country, as they’ll be able to provide you with speed and performance advantages your website needs. For example, if you’re based in Sydney or Melbourne, your safest bet is to turn to an Australian web hosting provider and have them do all the work for you.

Put JavaScript files at the bottom

The first thing you want to load for your visitors is your content. After all, that’s the best way to ensure they stick around even if the page hasn’t fully loaded yet. The problem here is that if you put your JavaScript files before your content, they’ll load first, making your visitors unable to access the content until the entire page has been loaded. This is something many people who don’t know much about JavaScript tend to do. Luckily, you can just move your JavaScript files to the bottom of your page and ensure visitors get to engage with your content as quickly as possible.

Enable compression

Compressing your website is a guaranteed way to make it load faster. Think of it as putting your entire site into a single .zip file rather than a folder with a bunch of files in it. If you enable compression, your visitors will have to download less data, resulting in improved load time. However, it’s also important to mention that website compression has a lot to do with your server and the settings you’re using. Bear in mind that some outdated browsers don’t support compressed content, but the number of people using them is significantly low.

Final thoughts

There’s nothing more important than load time when it comes to running a website. Have these five ways in mind and you should be able to give your site a significant performance boost. Just bear in mind that there are new trends emerging on a regular basis, and keeping an eye for new ways to improve website speed is recommended.

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About the Creator

Marie Nieves

A lifestyle blogger who loves unusual trips, gadgets and creative ideas. On her travels she likes to read poetry and prose and surf the Internet. Her favourite writer is Tracy Chevalier and she always carries one of her books in her bag.

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