Page load speed is a contributing factor to the success of your website.
We live in a time where gathering information is possible with a click of a button. The performance of a website matters more than ever. When we talk about website performance, page speed takes priority. Your visitors, especially the first-timers, expect your website to load fast and efficiently when they click your link. If it does not load up immediately, they will quickly move to another site rather than wait for another second.
In addition, even if these users stay on your website, a slow-loading page will only leave them disappointed in the middle of exploration and may decide to check out other websites instead. The more loading time increases, the higher the bounce rate. A one- to three-second delay yields a bounce rate of more than 30%, and a five-second waiting time increases by 90%. How huge is its impact?
Google measures page load speed as one of the metrics in search result ranking. Bounce rate, or the rate of visitors who navigated away from your website, drags down the user experience and your ranking. The higher your bounce rate is, the farther you would be on search engine results.
That’s the importance of page load speed. It satisfies the needs of your customers and Google. Additionally, it influences your consumers’ opinion of your business. Sluggish websites give an impression that you are unprofessional and unreliable. To make your website efficient for both your consumers and Google, you need to optimize your page speed.
How to Speed up Page Load Time
Website content such as videos and images, including your themes and plugins, coding, and server-side scripts are some of the factors that influence how fast your page loads. These are the things that you could do to improve page speed.
1. Choose a Reliable and Dedicated Web Hosting
The reliability of your website all starts with choosing reliable web hosting. Web hosting is one, if not the biggest, factor in how your website performs. The web host needs solid hardware to cater to the needs of your website.
Do not settle for mediocre hosting that is available to multiple websites. A shared pool of resources only overloads a server, straining loading time.
2. Optimize Your Media Files
While images and videos enhance the look of your website, their weight affects and delays your loading time. Here are some ways to optimize them:
- Change the file format. Use JPEG or PNG and not BMP and TIFF formats.
- Reduce the file size using graphic-editing tools without compromising the quality. Resize the images according to the pixels allowed by your web page.
- Use image optimization plugins that automatically resize and compress the images. The plugins include lossless compression and lazy loading. It also does the optimization in bulk.
3. Decrease your Redirects
The need for several redirects affects loading speed. When a page needs redirection, it sends an HTTP request, therefore, prolonging the process.
Though there are cases where redirects are necessary, removing the unnecessary ones helps reduce the baggage, thus decreasing loading time.
4. Utilize Cache
Caching your webpages and enabling browser caching speeds up your pages. It works by storing a copy of your files, thus reducing your server’s load. Since the pages are prepared and available, they do not need to be processed to be displayed on the user end. With its temporary storage area, it improves the performance of your website.
5. Utilize Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN delivers copies of your static website content across the globe. By distributing it to a server closer to your location, the page loading speed significantly improves. With CDN, there is no relatively long waiting time just to beat the travel distance data request between the browser and the server.
6. Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
Reduce the size of your files for an easier way to combine them. Web applications rely on these three web languages, and minifying them helps improve page load speed. Minification gets rid of unnecessary comments, characters, spaces, and lines.
How Important Is Page Speed for SEO
Page speed matters not only to your site visitors but also to Google. Google considers page load speed in ranking websites with its search engine results. You could fall last in the ranking when your website has high bounce rates due to slow-moving website pages. Google wouldn’t direct to sites that do not function well on devices.
How Page Speed Affects Conversion
A slow-loading page slows down business. Whenever visitors leave your site, there is a possibility that they will continue searching for other websites, dealing a massive blow to your conversion rates. Imagine how many potential customers you could lose just because your page wouldn’t load quickly.
Optimize Your Page Load Speed With Advanced Digital Media Services
Page load speed affects user experience, ranking, and conversion.
With Advanced Digital Media Services, we take care of everything your website needs, including page speed. Our team of skilled website developers and SEO analysts know precisely how to make your website run fast and employ effective methods to reach your online goals.
With our dedicated web hosting, better website management becomes readily available to you. Schedule an appointment with us, and let’s see if we fit your online needs.
