How to optimize your website’s performance
A website isn’t a great website unless it performs well for users. You could create the sleekest, most visually appealing site in the world, but that doesn’t mean a thing if the user experience sucks and your site takes forever to load. Studies show that if a site doesn’t load within 5 seconds, users tend to get impatient and visit another site instead. The attention economy is real. So let’s start optimize your website
So how do you ensure your website performs the best it can? Firstly, always go for a reputable web host provider such as Spaceship. After that, follow these tips.
Limit HTTP requests
Sometimes different parts of the webpage are fetched using HTTP requests. This can include anything from images to stylesheets. Whenever a webpage needs to render a HTTP request to load, it can slow things down considerably. If too many items are lined up to load when optimize your website, sometimes the browser will block some content from loading if the queue is too long. Not good. Prevent this from happening by cleaning out the clutter from your website. Get rid of anything unnecessary, such as stylesheets, fonts, Javascript files, and CMS plugins.
Optimize everything
From images to scripts, there is a way to ensure everything loads more efficiently and, therefore, faster. Try compressing your CSS and JavaScript files. Review your database operations to ensure everything is necessary. If it’s not, get rid of it. Large images can slow your site down, so prioritize compressing them too. There are ways to reduce image size without reducing quality, such as lowering dimensions and using the correct file format.
Enable caching
Browser caching saves a portion of your website’s content so the page can load faster each time a user visits. Many CMS automatically offer this option, but you can add a caching plugin if you aren’t sure.
Consider a CDN
Short for Content Delivery Network, a CDN provides website caching on a large scale. A CDN is a great investment for larger sites with an international audience. It works by caching a static version of your site across multiple servers in multiple locations across the globe. When a user visits your site, the browser will fetch content from the server closest to them geographically, ramping up the speed at which it loads.
Want to start by pinpointing any specific problems? Fortunately, there are plenty of free tools across the web that you can use to gain insight into your website’s page speeds and what’s causing any potential slowdowns. Using one of these tools lets you know which areas to focus on first.
