Page speed is the time a page on your website requires to load. According to google, a page speed of less than 2 seconds is considered good. This is true from the user’s perspective, but your page speed depends on the page type you have and how you’re measuring your page speed.
Why is your page speed important ?
Your SEO ranking –
Google’s algorithm is that the most relevant and less time consuming web pages will get a better ranking. It does not prefer delivering results that take up alot of time to load. Having a good page speed plays a huge part in your SEO ranking.
User Experience –
Attention span that people have on the internet is very low. A page that is slow to load will likely make the audience leave the page and never visit again. A faster website is a must to create a good user experience.
Conversion Rate Optimization –
People don’t prefer waiting for a page to load for more than 3 seconds. This will directly impact your CRO. Having a good page speed is needed to give your conversion rate a boost.
OPTIMIZATION OF WEBSITE SPEED:
- Minify Javascript, CSS and HTML
By removing unnecessary spaces, characters and commas you can drastically improve your page speed. Optimize the way your files load and decrease your file sizes. Doing so manually is not efficient and therefore plugins are the best for this job.
- Reduction in redirects
Redirects make the whole process of loading more time consuming. Redirects require the full cycle of HTTP request-response cycle to complete, this increases the loading time. To reduce redirects avoid creating unnecessary ones.
- Image optimization
Images make your website visually pleasing but uncompressed images can delay loading time. Compress and optimize your images to improve the loading speed. Compressing your images means reducing their ‘weight’ and resizing them to smaller files.
- Enable compression
You can use software applications to compress your CSS, JavaScript and HTML. Files that are larger than 150 bytes are the ones that increase the page load time.
- Eliminate plugins that are not needed
Having unnecessary plugins can increase the weight of your page and slow it down. You also need to make sure that the plugins you are using are updated and well maintained. An outdated one can cause a threat to your security. Additionally, lookout for the plugins that can reduce your page speed.
- Leverage Browser caching
Browser caching lets the browser store the information. This information includes images, stylesheets and JavaScript files. You can also use a Plugin to help you with Browser caching.
- Server response time
You can improve your server response time by identifying and perfecting slow database queries, inadequate memory and slow routing. The software that your server uses and traffic your website receives, impact your server response time.
- Content distribution Network
Content Distribution Network (CDN), improves your page loading speed with the help of a network of servers. A CDN works with the host and with the server that hosts your primary site. It reduces the distance between the browsers and your host’s servers that a data request has to travel.
Tools to measure your page speed
Page speed is not necessarily determined by the time your page takes to load completely. In a few cases, it is also the time your page takes to load the first pieces of information.
If you found the article interesting, we also have one on The 7 Best Practices for Image Optimization
