Know About Effective Website Speed Optimization Techniques.
August 13th, 2016 | by Ravi Chahar || 6 Comments |
Website speed is always a crucial topic to discuss. When you think about reducing the page loading time of your website then many things come into the mind. People seek for the best possible solution to improve website performance. Are you striving to boost up the speed of your website?
In this post, I am going to provide you some amazing tips which can help you to have a fast loading website. You have heard about that the page size of your website should be less so that the browser can load it easily. There are many actions which should be taken by you to reduce the page size.
If you care about your users and want to drive traffic to your blog then you should implement website speed optimization techniques.
How To Optimize Website Speed?
Why are you so curious to boost up the speed of your website? Is it about the SEO or the readers? Well, it’s about both because neither the search engine like the low loading website nor your readers like to visit your website again if it would take a lot of time to show the landing page. I am sure you won’t provide that bad experience to your users.
It’s always good to provide the fastest opening website so that people would come to your website and would want to visit again. From reducing the size of the files to the images, you have to take many actions for the size reduction of the page.
Let me walk you through the website speed optimization techniques:-
1. Reduce Image size:- You may have noticed that people upload bigger images in their blog post and forget to optimize the images. This would cause them because whenever their readers come to their website, they get annoyed. The bigger image would take more time to load.
There are many softwares which can help you to optimize the images for your website. You can optimize the images using some online tools and websites. TinyPNG is an amazing website which can optimize your website without even losing the quality.
2. Reduce HTTP Requests:- I have recently written a post about reducing the HTTP requests. While opening your website, the browser tries to fetch the website and checks the HTTP requests. The more requests tend to the danger sign. You should try to reduce HTTP requests by CSS sprites and by combining the files.
If you’re using the custom CSS for the designing of your website then it is advised to add those codes in the main CSS file of your website. It would be easy to fetch one file instead of many separated files.
3. By Minifying:- You can minify your website by reducing the size of the CSS, Javascript files. It can be done by removing the white space from the CSS code. If you have a little bit knowledge about these languages then it would be great because you can set the code in properly.
You can line up the code in small space, instead of spreading it around and increasing the size of the CSS file. The same thing goes with the Javascript file. You should combine the files into the main file so that it would be able to fetch easily.
4. Browser Caching:- To improve website performance, you should leverage browser caching. Whenever your readers open your website then the browser download the CSS files, Javascript files, HTML files, and images on the hard drive of the user so that the browser don’t need to fetch them again.
The cache is stored in the user’s browser and the files would be fetched from the cache memory when the user would open your website again. It would enhance the user’s experience and your website’s speed would seem to be reduced for the user.
5. Web Hosting:- The hosting service has the major role in the speed of your website. If your website has the major traffic and you’re trying to run it on the poor web hosting. Always try to choose the best web hosting company for your website. Search the web and read the reviews for the web hosting company before buying.
6. Use GZIP Compression:- On your website, there are many HTML and XML files which are of a quite of bigger size. You should use the GZIP compression technique for your HTML and XML files. All the files can be reduced up to 75%.
This is one of the best website speed optimization techniques. You have to add a simple code in your .htaccess file for which you should know how to edit .htaccess file.
7. Don’t Use Many Plugins:- For beginners, WordPress plugins are the solution for every problem. But they should try to find the solution without the plugins. the more no. of plugins you use on your website, the more would increase the Javascript which won’t be good for the website’s speed.
There are many things which can be done without using any plugin. You can add the social buttons without any plugin. You can add an image in the sidebar just by putting a simple code. There are many tasks which can be completed without WordPress plugins. Try to reduce the no. of plugins on your website.
8. Decrease No. of Redirects:- You know that in today’s era of smartphones the developers create a mobile responsive website. Sometimes they include the redirects so that whenever someone opens the website from the mobiles then the mobile version of the website gets opened.
It increases the no. of HTTP requests and so the page loading time. To improve website performance, you should try to reduce the no. of redirects.
9. Place Javascript on The Bottom:- Nowadays, developers are developing the dynamic websites which consist the use of the Javascript. It is always recommended to put the script on the bottom of your website. When your browser loads your website then it loads all the files present on your website.
If you put the script at the top in the header then it would take more time to open your website and the white page would appear to the users. If you put the script on the bottom then your user won’t notice the loading time because the website would open and the browser would load the script file later.
It is one the best website optimization techniques to use. Most of the people try to place the Javascript on the bottom and so you should.
10. Install A Caching Plugin:- There are many caching plugins in the WordPress directory using which you can improve the speed of your website. W3 Total Cache, WP Super cache, and many other caching plugins are there.
Did You get An Answer For How To Optimize Website Speed?
It is always considered that if your website speed is good then the people would come to back. It provides the best user experience. What if your website takes so much time to load? Well, it’s not the good thing to hear. Try to improve website performance by following the above-mentioned tips.
I am sure, you would be happy to see the results. While handling a WordPress website, so many efforts are required to make it stand. Build a better blog with the low page loading time.
If you still face any problem then change the theme of your website. There are many things to check when you choose the theme for your blog.
Hi Ravi. I think your list pretty much complete. The only thing that I have done that you didn’t mention to speed up my website was to put all of the images on a subdomain. For example, if your website url is myamazingblog.com then you could put all of your images on a subdomain at images.myamazingblog.com.
Your visitor’s web browser is limited to how many connections it can open to a domain at one time. By moving your pictures to a subdomain you have doubled the number of connections that your visitor’s browser can open at one time.
Hey Ben,
It’s quite a good idea to add the images in the sub-domain. It would reduce the HTTP requests and your browser won’t take much time to open your website. But sometimes, it causes the problem with the redirection.
So you have to do it properly otherwise, all the image links would be shown as broken.
Thanks for stopping by.
Enjoy the day.
~Ravi
Hey Ravi,
That’s quite a list of things to do a lot of which is beyond me. I’m always looking for ways to reduce the speed of my blog as I know it can be slow to load because I have a lot of posts and images on it. I’ve tried some plugins in the past that are supposed to help with the speed by doing something with the images. Can’t quite recall what right now! I’m thinking of getting a new theme now as I think mine is looking a bit dated. If I go ahead I’ll have to get my WordPress guy to implement some of the things you suggest. Now I’m going to read some more of the excellent information you have on here!
Hey Sandy,
There are a lot of things to do for improving the speed of your website. You should install a caching plugin which keeps your website clear with no caching data.
The images should be optimized and if it is possible then you can use CSS sprites. I know it’s a kind of hard to implement but there are many people who can do this.
You can ask your WordPress guy to do these things.
Thanks for taking time to share your thoughts.
Have a great day.
~Ravi
Ravi, what is your rule of thumb or any other criteria to judge a high-level “speed” of any website or blog?
Is there any specific service you use? or do you check posts and pages both?
I am keen to know if my website if doing well but I mainly rely on GTMetrix etc. any advice welcome.
Good article, thanks for sharing.
Ahmad,
There is not a specific tool other than GTmetrix and Pingdom Tools. All the information about your website’s speed would be provided by these tools.
Though the page loading time may differ every time you check it. So it’s always good to follow the guidelines provided by these tools.
You can just try to reduce the HTTP request and all other things. The final solution is using a paid CDN.
~Ravi