How to improve website loading speed

How to speed up your website 

You can take a number of steps to increase speed and improve user experience depending on the factors that influence how long each page takes to load on your site. 

We’re going to talk about tips and best practices for improving your site’s performance and making it load faster in this post. 

You may not need to do all of these tips right now, but they can help your site speed. 

It is possible that your site already follows some of these best practices if you’ve worked on them in the past. 

Now that we have that in mind, let’s begin. 

Minimize HTTP requests 

In an estimation, images, stylesheets, and scripts consume about 80% of a Web page’s loading time. 

There is an HTTP request made for each component on the page, so rendering the page will take longer the more there are. 

When attempting to minimize requests, you should consider your site’s current request number as a benchmark. 

If you use the Developer Tools in Google Chrome, you can see how many HTTP requests your site makes. 

When you have selected the page you wish to analyze, click “Inspect” and then “Network”.  

Minify and combine files 

You can start reducing your website’s request count now that you know how many requests it makes. You should start by looking at your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. 

Those files determine the look of your site, so they are extremely important. 

Every time a user visits your site, they also create more requests on your server. 

“Minifying” and merging your files will help reduce this number. The size of each file as well as the overall number of files decreases with this method. 

Use a template-driven website builder if you want to accomplish this. Although these tools simplify the process of building a website, they can create messy codes, which can considerably slow it down. 

Minifying a file is the process of removing unnecessary whitespace, formatting, and code. 

Use asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files 

If you minify and combine some of your files, you can also optimize the way that your pages load once they are optimized. 

Asynchronously and synchronously are two methods of loading scripts such as CSS and JavaScript . 

The scripts will load one after another in the order they appear on the page if you choose synchronous loading. In contrast, some scripts will load simultaneously if they are loaded asynchronously. 

Having files load asynchronously can make pages load faster because a browser typically loads from top to bottom while it loads a page. 

Once a CSS or JavaScript file does not load asynchronously, the loading will stop until that particular file has fully loaded. By loading that same file asynchronously, the browser could continue to load other elements on the page simultaneously. 

Defer JavaScript loading 

Deferring files means waiting for them to load after other elements have completed loading. You can ensure that your content, including JavaScript, loads without delay if you defer it. 

The WP Rocket plugin mentioned above can be used to enable delayed JavaScript loading easily on a WordPress site. You can defer loading JS files by checking the box next to “Load JS files deferred.” 

To call an external JavaScript file from an HTML site, you should place the call just before the </body> tag. 

Minimize time to first byte 

Furthermore, you should check the amount of time it takes for your page to start loading as well as how long it takes your page to load fully. 

The time it takes for a browser to get its first byte of data from the server, or time to the first byte is known as the time to the first byte. TTFB should be under 200 ms according to Google. 

This is a server-side concern, as opposed to front-end factors most site owners concentrate on. 

Your site will be visited by a user whose web browser sends an HTTP request to the server hosting it. In order for the first byte of data to be received, there is a three-step process to follow: 

1. DNS lookup 
2. Server processing 
3. Response 

Reduce server response time 

It takes a long time for your DNS lookup to finish, which plays a major role in how quickly your page loads. 

The Domain Name System, or DNS, is a server that contains a database of IP addresses and the hostnames they correspond to. A DNS server is what converts a URL into an IP address so that you can locate the site online when you type it into your browser. 

Hence, a DNS record lookup is finding a specific record within a DNS system. This is analogous to your computer searching the phone book for the number you want to call. 

Choose the right hosting option for your needs 

The cheapest hosting option is most often chosen by new site owners. In the early stages, this usually works just fine, but once you start getting more traffic, you’ll likely need to upgrade. Choose a host who you can trust and do not skimp on quality. A review of the best web hosts can be found on this page. 

Three options are available when it comes to hosting: 

• Shared hosting 
• VPS hosting 
• Dedicated server 

Run a compression audit 

To get the smallest files possible without sacrificing quality, you should make them as small as possible. Your files will load faster and your loading time will be slashed if they are smaller. 

The size of pages containing lots of images and other content can easily exceed 100KB. Because they take so long to download, they’re large and slow. 

Compressing downloads speeds up the process. 

Enable compression 

Having smaller files will speed up the loading of your website. A common practice today is to enable file compression via Gzip, which is considered standard practice for reducing load times. 

It uses the Gzip file format to modify your text files by locating and replacing similar strings of code so the files can be compressed. 

As CSS and HTML typically contain repeated code and whitespace, these files work well with this approach. 

In most web servers, files can be compressed in Gzip format before being sent for download, either by using a third-party module or by calling built-in routines. Yahoo cites download times reduced by approximately 70% when this is done this way. 

Gzip is the standard compression algorithm used by 90% of today’s internet browsers, so it’s an excellent way to improve your site’s performance. 

Enable browser caching 

In a cache or temporary storage, the elements of a website are stored on your computer when you visit it. 

You will not have to send another HTTP request to the server the next time you visit the site. 

Your website requires that your visitors download HTML, stylesheets, javascript files, and images prior to using it for the first time. As many as 30 components may be downloaded over the course of 2.5 seconds. A few components need to be downloaded if a user returns to the page after a previous load. After the page has been loaded and the components are stored in the user’s cache, the page does not need to be reloaded. 

Reduce image sizes 

The images on your site can have a huge impact on how fast your site is. These files are usually very large, causing page loading times to slow down. 

Nonetheless, they should not be removed entirely. 

Approximately 1-3% of eCommerce websites convert, on average 

However, for some sites, such as an affordable website design company like Thedesignzoned. To reach an average conversion rate of about 5%, with approximately 85% of those conversions coming from mobile – that number can rise as high as 5%. Including as many helpful product images as possible is one of the best strategies to get your conversion rate up to this level. A consumer survey found that 66% of respondents preferred seeing a minimum of three photos before making a purchase.