How fast does your website load? The most recommended loading speed is two seconds or lower. People want to get to your site as quickly as possible. The minute your site takes a long to open, they leave immediately. Also, among the algorithms Google uses to rank sites is the loading speed. Therefore, there is a need for you to customize your website to load faster.
Below are ways to make your site’s page load faster.
1. Review your hosting package
What hosting package do you have? Get a website developer who understands different types of hosting packages. Have them advise you on the best package. Usually, sharing a server with many companies can be one of the causes of delayed loading speed. It’s good to consider dedicated hosting which allows one server or the virtual private cloud [VPC] which has multiple servers with each having its operating system.
2. Minimize HTTP requests
Sites are slow mainly because there are many HTTP requests. One can minimize them by combining requests. The best way to do this is by first understanding the requests so that you can figure out which ones to reduce and which ones to merge. Pingdom helps you to see how many requests are on a page.
Avoiding the usage of images is also another way of minimizing the HTTP request. This is because images carry a significant percentage on the page. It’s almost impossible not to use images so; you can combine a variety of them to help ease the website.
3. Keeping the HTTP alive
Keep-alive is my method that allows the same TCP for an HTTP conversation instead of opening a new one for every new request.
, web pages are usually a collection of numerous files. If a new communication has to be opened for every file, it will take longer to display the web page. In turn, it increases the time taken to open a page.
Enabling the keep-alive feature helps boost your site’s loading page.
No site owner wants readers to try loading the web page, and get errors. Just as Windows sometimes has errors, it’s recommended to get the right diagnosis for it. For example, you need to know how to find the missing msvcp 120.dll file to avoid such errors.
4. Compressing
Compressing of content is another way to improve the loading process of a site. A web server like Apache which is popular uses GZIP compressor to compress. It uses an algorithm to compress JavaScript, HTML, and CSS automatically.
5. Evaluation of the plugin
Plugins are essential in web design, but when used in excess they often delay the loading process of a site. As it is almost impossible not to use plugins in a site, only install the necessary ones. After reviewing eliminate those that are not important to help offload the website.
6. Minifying JavaScript and position of scripts
A minifying external script will help the site load faster. These external scripts may include pop-ups on the websites, Facebook pages, comments, and also blank spaces. The positioning of scripts is also important as any time the page loads and encounters a script it will load first before the page. Positioning the script at the beginning of a page will delay page loading as it will first load the script. Due to this, it is essential to place the script at the end. That way the loading process will be easier which makes the speed even faster.
7. Using cache
Browser cache helps in storing static files every time the website is visited. It helps the server as it doesn’t have to load each time the site is visited as the history is there. It contributes to easing the loading process.
8. Using adaptive images
According to research done by HTTP archive, 61% of the weight on a website page is from images. Tools that minimize the size of images without changing the quality will help reduce the weight. Cropping of images to remove the unnecessary parts helps in reducing the weight too. Using image formats also helps, an example is WebP.
9 Configuring the expiry of headers
When one visits a website, the file is stored so that the server doesn’t have to load again when the same file is revisited. The record can only stay there for a while which mostly is 24hrs. By configuring the expiry of the header one can be able to come up with a way the header doesn’t expire at all, or it can take a much more extended period to expire. This, in turn, helps make the page load faster.
10. Implementation of own Content Delivery Network
By implementing its own content delivery network [CDN], it will help to deliver web content to use to the nearby server geographically and hence it will be easy to load the content faster. It is possible as it uses a collection of global servers that use the same website statics which include javascript and CSS. An example of a CDN is the Amazon Cloud Front.
The tips above should help you be able to reduce the loading time of your website. It will also help improve the website’s SEO which increases your chances of ranking highly.
