Last week we covered the 6 deadly sins that could harm your mobile search rankings if you’re not using responsive design. As promised, today’s post covers one of the risks of using a responsive design – a lag in page load speed – and 5 tips to speed up your responsive site.
1. Resize images for different screen resolutions. The single quickest way to improve mobile web performance is serving the right sized images to different smartphones and tablets out there. This is even more important with large Retina assets becoming more common.
2. Optimize and compress images further with new image formats like WebP. While not supported by all browsers yet, WebP provides an additional 25-30% size benefit compared to traditional formats like PNG and JPEG, helping the pages load quicker.
3. Reduce the number of scripts and move them to the end of your HTML templates. This quick change can help your website render faster by displaying primary content even as parts of the page keep loading.
4. Eliminate redirects to m-dot sites in favour of responsive web design. Google recommends responsive web design as the best way to go mobile with maximum SEO benefits. By using One URL across all devices, you also eliminate the need for costly browser redirects from desktop to mobile and back.
5. Use a fast & reliable CDN (content delivery network). While cloud storage services are becoming extremely affordable, they don’t replace the need for a fast global CDN partner like Edgecast or Akamai – especially on slower wireless connections. Faster performance equals more revenue!
Special thanks to Igor Faletski of Mobify for contributing these tips. If you want to run a quick test to see how optimized your responsive URLs are, you can use this free tool from Mobify..
Join Linda Bustos at the Shop.org Merchandising Workshop July 16 for Mobile Commerce: Is Responsive Right for Retail?