8 Ways to Speed Up Your Website and Improve Conversion

Let’s face it: website performance is a key factor in the success of your business. A slow, unresponsive site will drive customers away, while a fast one can draw them in. And yet, despite this fact, most people still don’t pay much attention to how fast their websites load.

If they do consider the speed at all, they often believe that faster sites are always better – and that’s not always true! We’ll look at both sides of this issue before breaking down some easy ways to make your site faster (and more conversion-friendly).

Choose a good web hosting company

According to our friends from Dallas digital marketing agency, choosing a good web hosting company is essential to your website’s speed and performance. Just like choosing a doctor or mechanic, finding the right web host can make all the difference between a fast, healthy site and one that’s slow and unreliable.

Once you’ve decided on one or more hosting providers, get quotes from them for several different types of hosting packages that are suitable for your needs. You’ll want to look at things like bandwidth limitations (how much data per month can I use?), disk space limitations (how much room do I have left?), number of emails allowed per month (is this enough?), etc., so be sure to ask about these things before committing yourself long term!

Reduce the number of HTTP requests

The number of HTTP requests your website makes is a good indicator of how fast it loads. The more files that need to be downloaded, the longer it will take for them to load.
In order to reduce the number of HTTP requests and make your site faster, there are a few things you can do:

• Use CSS sprites instead of individual images (this reduces the number of images that need to be downloaded).
• Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to serve all assets from one location instead of multiple servers worldwide. This also helps reduce latency between browsers and hosts because they’re closer together physically than if they were hosted locally on different servers at different locations around the globe!
• Lazy loading allows developers to load only what’s needed when needed rather than all at once. This saves both bandwidth and CPU cycles by keeping unnecessary elements out until later when users visit those areas on their journey through your site/app etc…

Compress your images, CSS, and JavaScript files

Compression is a process that reduces the size of a file by removing unnecessary data or encoding information in a more efficient format. When you compress an image, for example, it saves space on your server’s hard drive as well as makes it faster to load in visitors’ browsers.

Several online tools allow you to compress CSS and JavaScript files easily: YUI Compressor (free) or Closure Compiler ($50). Both are command-line programs that can be used alongside other configuration options in order to optimize each individual file appropriately so they download quickly without sacrificing quality.

For example, YUI Compressor uses Gzip compression, allowing developers to save up to 80%+ on bandwidth usage over traditional non-compressed versions without affecting page load times significantly (if at all).

Optimize your site’s load time by caching static resources

Caching static resources is a great way to improve performance and reduce bandwidth usage. There are several ways you can cache your site’s static resources, but they all rely on adding some sort of code to the HTML of the page.

The most common method is using a tag with an expired header set too far in the future (e.g., “expires: Mon, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT”). This tells browsers not to download images until after that date – a huge win for speed!

If you want more control over how long each image stays cached on different devices and browsers, add a Cache-Control header instead (e.g., “Cache-Control: max-age=31536000”). Alternatively, if you’re using WordPress, there’s an easy way built into it!

Just go into Settings > Permalinks, then select “Custom Structure” from under “Common Settings.” After clicking the Save Changes button at the top right corner of the screen, make sure that each file extension has been checked off (i.e., “.jpg”), then click Update Options above the permalink settings list area before selecting Yes when asked Do You Want To Update Your Permalinks Structure?

Minimize server-side processing time with HTTP/2 push methods

With HTTP/2, you can also use the push method to speed up your website. This new feature of HTTP/2 allows the server to push resources to the client before it requests them.

The idea behind this method is simple: as soon as your visitor loads one page on your website, all other resources needed by that page are sent in parallel without interrupting any user interaction with their browser.

For example, suppose someone visits an article on our blog (which uses WordPress). In that case, we might send them all images used in that article at once instead of waiting until they request each one individually after clicking through several pages first!

There are two important requirements for this feature: 1) both sides must support HTTP/2; 2) there needs to be some sort of mechanism for identifying what parts should be pushed ahead of time so that browsers know which ones belong together when served together later down the line – and this is where Content Delivery Networks come into play.

Configure your CDN correctly

The last thing you want to do is slow down your site by having it load assets from a slow CDN. To avoid this, ensure your CDN supports HTTP/2 and HTTP/2 push.
HTTP/2 is a new version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows websites to load faster than ever before.

This means that when someone visits your site, they’ll be able to start viewing content right away instead of waiting for all the images and other assets that make up your site’s design to load first. And then scroll down as those elements appear one by one in their browser window or mobile app.

This can be especially important if you’re using video or audio files on any part of your page because these types of media tend not only to take longer than text but also require additional processing power from both users’ devices as well as servers hosting those files themselves. This might lead some people who’d otherwise convert into customers walking away frustrated because they don’t want to wait around forever just so they can see what products look like!

Reduce redirect chains

Redirects are used to send users from one page to another, but they can also become a performance problem if they’re not optimized. If you have many redirects on your site, this may be slowing down load times and hurting conversions. Reduce the number of redirects you have as much as possible without compromising user experience – it won’t help if you have one or two more than necessary!

Optimize the size of your page load times

When it comes to optimizing your website, there are a few things you can do that will immediately impact speed. One of the most important is reducing the server response time. If a user clicks on a page and has to wait 5 seconds for it to load, they may lose interest and move on.

The best way to reduce this problem is by using caching technology such as CDNs (content delivery networks), which store static content at various locations around the world so that it’s closer to users who need it.

This helps reduce latency further when those users request information from your site again later on in their session or after closing their browser window and opening up another one later on – it makes sure everything loads quickly each time they want to access again!

Conclusion

Now that you know the basics of speeding up your website, it’s time to start. You may have some questions about which steps are most important for your site and how best to implement them.

That’s why we’ve created a free ebook with everything you need: from an overview of how HTTP/2 works and why it’s so fast to step-by-step instructions on optimizing every aspect of your site (from images and videos through CSS files).

 

Tomas McKannie

Editor in Chief @ Find Digital Agency

+1(646) 9806671

https://finddigitalagency.com/