What exactly is website speed?

Website speed, in a nutshell, relates to how fast your contents loads when someone views a page on your website. Page speed, not website speed, represents the time it takes for a given page to load.

Page speed can be affected by a number of things. Among the most important are:

The number of photos, animations, and other media assets on the page

What plugins and themes are you using on your website?

The coding of your website (as well as the specific page) and server-side scripts

All of these factors influence page loading speed and, as a result, the user experience of your website. Visitors, after all, despise slow-loading sites and are more likely to abandon them.

What is the significance of page speed?

When it comes to site loading speed, every second counts. According to Google study, increasing loading times from one to 3 seconds raises the likelihood of a bounce (the user departing immediately) by 32%.

If the site takes five seconds for it to load, the likelihood of a bounce increases by 90%.

In all other words, if your websites do not load within a few seconds, users are more likely to abandon your site. Moreover, slow web pages can impair your capacity to drive conversions and attract visitors.

Page speed is equally important in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While determining how to rank web pages, Google considers a wide range of characteristics.

7 Simple Ways to Increase Page Loading Speed

Now that you understand the significance of page speed and how to assess the performance of your website, it’s time to start on improving this critical parameter.

With that in mind, here are seven simple strategies to make your pages load faster.

1.Choose a performance-optimized hosting solution

The hosting service you pick has a considerable effect on the operation and performance of your website. This includes its webpage loading times.

Accepting substandard hosting in exchange for a reduced monthly charge is one of the worst blunders you can make.

Affordable hosting is frequently correlated with poor performance. That may imply pooling resources across numerous websites on an overburdened server, which may strain your site loading times.

On the other side, there are a few performance-focused hosting solutions available that offer a robust platform optimised for speed. These providers often do not provide shared hosting, so you won’t need to worry about other websites emptying your possible resources.

2.Optimize the size of images

Everyone likes visually appealing pictures. Images are critical components of successful eCommerce sites. A large number of photos, images, and visuals on your company websites increase interaction. The disadvantage of using images is that they are typically big files that slow down a web page.

Compressing photos with tools like JPEGmini, ImageOptim, or Kraken is the best option to minimise image size without sacrificing quality. The procedure may be lengthy, but it is well worth it. Another method is to use the HTML responsive images secret> and size> attributes, which modify image size dependent on user display characteristics.

3.Reduce your redirects

Just so many redirects on your site can significantly slow down loading speeds. Every time a page redirects to some other location, the HTTP request and respond process is prolonged.

Of course, redirects may be required in some instances, such as when switching to a new domain. Yet, eliminating unneeded redirects from your site can drastically reduce page loading times.

There are several methods for reducing redirection in WordPress. One is to avoid creating them when developing inbound links and navigation. Another consideration is that your Top-Level Domain (TLD) resolves with no more than one redirection.

4.Cache your website’s pages

Caching is among the most effective methods for speeding up your website. Caching saves copies of your website’s files, reducing the amount of work required by the server to build and serve a web page to a visitor’s browser.

By requiring the server to spend limited resources to load a page, caching your web pages can assist reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB).

There are several methods for caching your web pages. This can be changed at the server level, which means your host will manage it for you.

Another alternative is to utilise a caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache, a free WordPress plugin that makes caching web pages simple. After you’ve installed and activated it, go to General Settings > Page Cache and check the Enable box.

You may also use WP Rocket, a strong caching plugin that will speed up your loading time and optimise your PageSpeed Insights rating and Core Web Vitals in a matter of seconds. Moreover, upon activation, the addon applies 80percent of web speed best practises – the ideal solution for conserving time and making your site faster.

5.Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

Page loading time can be improved by optimising the way your files load. Minifying your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code can also benefit. This entails deleting extraneous spaces, letters, comments, and other aspects to decrease file size.

Reducing the size of your files also makes them simpler to merge. As a result, the code is cleaner, and the web pages are leaner and load faster.

Of course, looking over every line of code for every file on your site is inefficient.

Instead, use the free Autoptimize plugin to minify your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.

6.Use a content delivery network (CDN).

A Content Delivery Network (CDN), also known as a ‘content distribution network,’ is a network of servers that can aid in the speed of page loading. It achieves this by hosting and delivering static content copies from servers all over the world.

A CDN operates with your host rather than in place of it. Aside from the server that serves your principal website, you can use a CDN to distribute replicas of your site’s files across multiple data centres.

This can improve performance by shortening the distance that data requests must travel across browsers and your host’s servers. A CDN reduces network latency and produces reduced TTFBs by loading contents for a web page from a server nearby to each visitor.

You have several CDN alternatives, one of which is to choose a host that offers a CDN, which you can activate straight from the host’s dashboard.

7.Remove unneeded plugins

All plugins are not created equal. Trying to put too many plugins on your site might generate bloat and slow it down.

Moreover, old or poorly maintained plugins might represent a security risk and can introduce compatibility issues that degrade performance.

As a result, it’s a good idea to limit the number of plugins you utilise on your WordPress site. Of course, among the simplest methods to accomplish this is to disable and delete any plugins you aren’t currently using.

We also urge that you review the plugins you have downloaded to see if they are truly necessary. Certain tools may have duplicate features and functions, while others may be no longer applicable to your needs.

Finally, some plugins may cause your site to load more slowly than others. You can test each plugin individually to detect those that are slowing down your page speeds.

Conclusion

Nowadays, the average user expects web pages to load in less than 3 seconds. If you are not able to match this expectation, you will lose a lot of internet visitors and, as a result, money.

As a result, we recommend following a basic yet effective website performance improvement strategy:

Evaluate and assess the major success elements for your website, such as conversion, visibility, and usability.

Assess the current performance of your website and prioritise the pages and features that require the most attention in terms of these three parameters.

Begin your optimization with the most time-consuming parts and concentrate on the pages that are most important to your conversion success.