Web Development

Make Your Site Faster! Page Load Speed Hacks

Do you have a website? And are you constantly checking it to see if it needs any updates and so because you don’t seem to get much viewers? You change the layout, the colors, add more pictures, overall make the site seem as pleasant and eye catching as it can be. But even after doing all of this how come you still aren’t getting viewers?

With no for few viewers it will drive your website to the bottom of the result pages due to the lack of people on it. So you have to figure out what is wrong immediately or else there could be severe consequences.

Now one of the reasons why you may not be getting viewers is due to the speed it takes to load the page. There are occasions when websites will lag, there are many reasons as to why this may happen, these can be discussed later on. The more important thing is that you have to overcome it somehow. There are plenty of ways to do this too, but you have to see what the most effective way is. It could be an extremely simple case, or it may take a long time to do, and it could end up becoming costly. So it is important to find strategies to improve page load speed on your website, but it also important to make sure that you are doing it at a balanced rate.

Diagnostics-Why might the loading speed be slow?

Loading speeds could be low for several reasons, most of them can be minuscule, and easily fixable, but some are more complicated. You can use PageSpeed Insights or other tools to see what might be slowing your site down. One reason why it may be slow is because of the un-optimized images. If there is large number of un-optimized images it can be slow because high resolution image take up a lot of bandwidth. You could also have JavaScript issue, the use of these sort of query plugins have made it easier, convenient and dynamic to have better content on websites. But the thing is coding can sometimes be difficult, confusing, and challenging, therefore mistakes can be made. When mistake are made, or the coding is done incorrectly then this could also cause issues with the loading speeds. Since it take time for the query or JavaScript to load and be interpreted it can delay the loading web page.

You could also have too much of flash content, flash tools are great for adding interactivity to your site, but these can be bulky, as they are big in size. The bigger the size means the slower your page will be. Furthermore there could be excessive HTTP requests. When a user visits your page they will make requests, that means they go to what they want, click new links and so on, this can also deteriorate the page load speed. Not making use of caching techniques can also be the cause of the problem. If you’re not caching it means your missing out as what caching does is speed up the process.

There could also be unclean codes, these could be like extra white lines, or empty new lines, and so on. Since there is nothing there it assumes that just because the line is there some information may be there. So it will take time to read the code eventually slowing down the speed of the page. These are just a few things that may be the reason for the slow speeds, so it’s important to check these out so it won’t be slow anymore.

What strategies can you use?

Your page is slow, so now you’re trying to find some kind of strategies to improve the page load speed on your website. Well there are a couple of ways, but before you try them you have to asses what s causing the problem, that way you can get a better performance. Now say you have un-optimized images the best way to fix this issue is by considering the format, if it is in a JPEG then it will load faster because the size is smaller compared to other formats. Consider using a free web tool (like this one) to compress images to smaller sizes. Now assume you have too much flash content, then the best thing for you to do is to reduce the file size, this is the same as it is for pictures, the smaller it is the faster it will load.

Remember to cache, this is extremely important, because it is any requests from the same content gets cached and immediately it will increase the speed of the whole data retrieval process. You also need to clean up your code, this means getting rid of all those unnecessary white, and empty lines. So don’t be lazy and clean up your code. Ads are also a big problem, but sometimes it can be difficult to get rid off. One way to get rid of them is by buying premiums and such. These are just a few strategies that could be used to improve the speed, so do what is necessary for you. You can also see some best practices suggestions from Moz.

Why is speed important?

Speed matters, it matters a lot, because the speed of it will make a first impression, when it loads faster people will praise it, so you have a good first impression. Plus speed is needed, people aren’t going to wait around until it loads. By the time it takes to load it they would have found another better site. So if you don’t want to lose viewers consider the speed. It is also good for user experience, because it is beneficial to them, so they would always have a positive attitude toward the site. Furthermore a slow website kills conversions, you don’t want that. It is basically you losing all of your customers, which means there will be a drop in sales. Slow websites are not good for the long run, because if people aren’t going on your site the SEO of it will drop, and you won’t be at the top anymore, and it would be difficult to get back up.… Read the rest