The amount of time it takes for a website to load is equally important, especially concerning usability and search engine ranking. By enhancing load, one can increase user satisfaction, reduce bounce rate, and even attain a better, or at least maintain the current position on the SERP. In contrast, a slow website means frustrated users and less traffic coming to the website in question. In this blog post, we are going to take a closer look at ten practical recommendations that will let you increase the loading speed of your website.

1. Optimize Images

Another cause of the extensive loading time is usually the improper implementation of images in the design of the organization’s website. Optimizing the images means the action of compressing the images without necessarily making the picture any smaller, or in other words, without having to allow the quality to deteriorate is one of the most effective ways of making your website faster. Among the recommended tools to be used to minimize the size of the image is Adobe Photoshop; one can use online services, for instance, Tiny PNG. Just make sure the image format being uploaded is right: for pictures, use JPEG while for graphics with background, use PNG.

2. Minimize HTTP Requests

With the HTTP request, every time the user visits your website, the browser tries to request the different aspects of your page such as the image, styles, and scripts among others. Every time a person enters a specific web, the common requests will take time and thus be slow to load. As mentioned above, it is quite possible to lower HTTP requests by lessening the design, merging the files, and applying CSS sprites to the images if necessary. One must limit the generation of these requests as it significantly affects the speed of the website.

3. Leverage Browser Caching

This is whereby browsers are allowed to store some aspects of your website like images, style sheets, and JavaScript locally on a user’s device. This means that once a user revisits a site, the browser does not have to fetch all of these elements thus improving on the time taken. There should then be a setting of expiry time for different file types relative to the changes they undergo so that the next time the same visitor revisits the site it loads faster.

4. Enable Compression 

Another feature that can be enabled to enhance the site loading speed is compression. When you combine your files, where you are using much of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript your files get smaller and therefore load faster. This method of compression is done using Gzip which is the most popular method used by servers in compressing large files. Still, it is recommended that enabling the compression can be a big boost when it comes to reducing the duration it may take some of your pages to load, particularly for users with slow internet connection. 

5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

When employing a CDN, the content of a particular Website is stored within this server and the user downloads the content from the nearest server. This reduces the distance that the data has to travel and consequently, the time that it takes for your site to appear. CDNs can be great for websites with many users worldwide because, even if the visitor of the site is located in another continent, the site’s content will load much faster due to CDN.

6. Minify CSS, javascript, and HTML 

Minifying your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files means the reduction of spaces, commas, and other characters that are not necessary in the code. This process makes the size of the files smaller, and this in turn enhances your website’s speed of loading. The process of these changes can be managed automatically through several tools which include CSSNano for CSS and UglifyJS for JavaScript. 

7. Prioritize Above-the-Fold Content 

Caching this content makes sure it comes out quickly as this improves the overall perceived time it takes to load for the users. This can be done by properly minifying CSS and loading scripts either synchronously or asynchronously or may be loaded through the use of script loaders that load a script just in time or after the page’s main content has already loaded. It enables the users to engage with your site earlier, thus even the part containing some elements may not be fully loaded.

8. Reduce Redirects 

Redirects are at times needed but they pose as a disadvantage if used in excess in the website. Every time that one page throws the visitor to another page, the visitor has to wait for the request-response cycle of HTTP to occur. It shows that reducing the number of redirects as much as possible can go a long way in enhancing the loading times. On the site audit, it is recommended to search for additional and excessive redirects and to remove them. 

9. Use Efficient Web Hosting 

The kind of web host provider you choose to sponsor your website greatly affects your website’s loading speed. This is cheap, however confined hosting means that the resources are split with all other websites on the server, which can make your site slow. In case of high traffic on your website, it will be advisable to create the need to upgrade to a better server such as a dedicated server or even Virtual Private Server (VPS). 

10. Regularly Monitor and Test Your Website Speed

As we mentioned before, it is necessary to perform constant monitoring and testing of your website’s speed. Many tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix and Pingdom give a deeper prognosis of your site and offer you an advice on how to proceed with its optimization. Testing can be done frequently and this ensures that any new problem that may come up in the website is attended to at an early stage.

For more information on how to monitor and optimize your site’s speed, read this MindStick article on website optimization. 

Conclusion 

It is crucial to enhance the speed of loading of your website so that the users will have a good experience as well as enjoy a high ranking from the search engines. That’s it: when images have been optimized, HTTP requests are as few as possible, browser caching is used, and compression enabled, you are guaranteed of having a fast website. Do not forget to make a routine of visiting your site to test it and check for any problem that may be present.