how can I improve the speed of my website?
OP-TI-MI-ZA
We are going crazy using more and more plugins to implement certain functionalities, connecting to any network, uploading files all the time and hosting our sites in cheap hostings. Did you think that the user would not notice?
The loading speed of your website is a key indicator of the level of optimisation. If it takes too long to load, the user will end up abandoning the page. Nothing ruins a site more than a bad loading experience. In fact, "a one second delay can reduce customer satisfaction by 16%".
does this mean that optimising the speed of your website will improve your customers' experience and increase your conversion rate?
Literally.
what is the speed of your website?
It is nothing more and nothing less than the time it takes for a website to load completely. Of course, the less time it takes, the better. Especially, because if a website is too slow, within the online universe, it is a handicap that affects conversion. Moreover, according to a study by Akami, "a delay of 2 seconds in the loading of a website can increase bounce rates by more than 100%, with the consequent loss of traffic".
One of the biggest problems faced by marketing managers of companies is that many are not aware of the importance of site load times. They do not even appreciate their improvement in a few thousandths of a second. Without awareness, there is no change, so they stagnate and prioritise other issues, such as SEO or social networks, losing visits and revenue.
do you know how to correct these problems? Continue reading this post, you won't regret it.
5 tools to do a web speed test
Let's start at the beginning. Loading speed, a priori, may not seem to have much to do with our digital marketing strategy, but the opposite is true. It is key!
Think... All companies want to attract more visits to their website and that the user spends as much time as possible browsing it, which would not happen if your loading speed was slow.
Also, don't forget that we are facing a type of public marked by immediacy, with a smartphone in their pocket, who wants to browse at full speed. They want to consume information here and now.
So if you want to generate good experiences for your users, you must not only understand the reality, but adapt to it. If you are having web speed problems or would like to identify the level of optimisation, take note of the following free tools to test it:
- Pingdom Tools- Great for testing your website speed and learning how to optimise it to load faster, it measures uptime, monitoring and user experience on a single platform.
- WebPagetest- When you access it, you can do a simple or advanced search, enter your domain and get results on your web speed.
- GTmetrix- When you do a quick analysis, the tool defaults to your Canadian location, but you can register for free to do more precise searches and change your location.
- Measure is very effective for understanding your website's performance over time, as well as getting tips and advice for improvement.
- PageSpeeds Insights is Google's free tool, with which you can rate your site on a scale of 0 to 100.
Even if you think your website is working properly, there is always something to improve, and the best way to do this is through Web Performance Optimisation (WPO) techniques.
how to optimise the loading speed? 5 tips
If you decide to use any of these tools and apply optimisation techniques, it is important to measure the performance of the page before and after the changes. This is the only way to know if the techniques applied are working or not.
Imagine how vital the speed of your website is to the user experience that even Google included it as one of its ranking factors.
Now that you know the importance of page load times, stay with these recommendations:
- Improve the mobile version
More and more users are using their mobile phones to search the internet, so the more optimised the mobile version of your site is, the more likely you are to be rewarded by Google.
- Compress your images
Very large images are one of the main causes of slow loading times. Some people recommend files of less than 200 KB and others suggest less than 70 KB. In any case, less is more and you should take care of the quality of your images. Tools such as Photoshop will help you compress your files without losing quality.
- Get rid of render-blocking elements
Sometimes pages are coded to load less important elements, such as a banner. Ideally, prioritise the code so that the main content is the first thing that appears on the page.
- Avoid redirects
remember those times when you click on a link and are directed to one or more pages before you get to the desired website? Well, it affects your users' experience and the web speed of your site.
- Reduce your HTML, CSS and JavaScript code
Many of these terms may sound like Greek to you, but they are vital to the construction of your site. If they contain a lot of extra and redundant code, they can affect loading speed. Professional developers recommend minimising them.
How loading speed influences your rankings
This works like a chain: the faster your page loads, the higher it is ranked by Google. And higher rankings mean more visitors and a higher chance of conversion. In short, your loading speed is important for SEO:
- A slow loading speed can cause another site to overtake you on a search engine results page. Perhaps, your competition.
- Improve indexing: If you take into account that search engine spiders have a limited time to visit each page and index urls, if the speed is slow, the spider will not crawl all urls.
Waiting time can make the difference between a good sale or an abandoned shopping cart.
So what is the ideal web loading speed?
There is no exact answer to this question, although experts recommend no more than 2 seconds.
Tell us, how fast is fast for you? At Occam Digital Agency, we help you solve your web speed problems.
