Tips and tricks to optimize the speed of a website
Websites are getting bigger and more complex with each passing day. This leads to slower loading of websites and ultimately decreased sales conversions.
The average online shopper expected a website to load in just four seconds in 2006. Over the years, remarkable technological innovations have made it more difficult to meet an online shopper’s expectations. Today, an online shopper wants a website to load in just two seconds. Considering that the loading time of a website is so important, even Google has started factoring site speed into its algorithm when ranking websites.
If your website is performing poorly, users won’t even think twice about leaving it. Here are some things you should do to optimize your website speed.
Modularity
If it’s possible to combine two CSS classes and use less code to get the same result, you should do it instantly. This would make the code modular. However, this might not be necessary if you are using basic HTML and CSS. On the other hand, following these tips becomes essential if your website is in the complex world of JavaScript.
Minimization of HTTP and dependency requests
Dependency requests have been the main reason behind slow loading speed of a website. Any kind of additional request adds overhead and a new layer of complexity to the download and parsing process. Calling images from a style sheet also counts as a request. Therefore, you should limit the use of alternative optimization methods such as SVG or sprites.
If your website is large, you should consider using a content delivery network (CDN). It would eliminate any kind of slow server connections, reduce bandwidth and improve overall availability.
Write smarter, more readable code
The code being written can also be the reason behind the slow loading of a website. Inefficient CSS or bloated JavaScript can affect load times in unimaginable ways. So instead of writing the path in a chain of selectors, you may want to use the smallest uniquely identifiable selector.
Simple HTML maintenance
To write more efficient CSS selectors and keep bloat to a minimum, one will have to write efficient HTML code.
Resetting CSS will lead to a redesign of all common elements. This means that even if you’re not targeting the extra div, the extra div would most likely slow things down because its padding and margin would be reset to the minimum. The problem wouldn’t be severe until a dozen divs were reset.
Compress images and text
There are several tools that can help you compress the text and images you are using on your website.
A slow loading website interrupts the visitor’s browsing experience. Besides the size of the files, there are other reasons such as low server memory, data influx, site design, etc. that affect the performance and speed of a website. So the bottom line is that you should monitor your website performance at regular intervals as it makes the difference between making or not making revenue.
If you have no idea how to optimize the loading speed of your website, you can contact an expert web development company.
