More than 80 percent users wish for a fast loading website when they land to any webpage and surprising, approx. 64 percent of users expect websites to load in 4 seconds – no matter whether they are browsing a site on mobile devices, laptop or desktop.
This brings the most obvious factor i.e. the speed of the website’s page loading times into the limelight because downplaying the value of page speed can be bad for a site’s reputation. In such a scenario, website speed has emerged out as a major and serious issue of concern for website owner, especially if you want to create a positive impression in the mind of your impatient, targeted users who want your web page to load in a fraction of seconds.
Many people consider that optimizing website’s speed is a tricky task. However, the fact is quite different from this myth. You can speed your website load times by simply implementing a few techniques including minimizing file sizes, altering server settings and optimize codes (CSS/Javascript)
Today’s post of Psdhelpline will focus on various essential tips through which one can improve the overall experience of a website, especially on the grounds of loading speed. Hopefully, you find below best practices worthy in making your website load faster than ever.
1. What’s Your Current Speed
First and foremost, analyze the current page speed of your website. Over the internet, there are various free tools are available that come handy to check the loading speed of your site. Pingdom, Page Speed and Web Page Test are some popular tools to analyze the speed and performance of your website.
2. Faster Servers = Faster Loading Speed
A good and fast server plays a great role in improving the site’s loading speed. Therefore, make sure to run your site on a reputed server with a leading hosting partner such as GoDaddy, Hostgator and BlueHost. Try to avoid shared hosting and upgrade to a dedicated one that helps in dramatic decrease in the load time of your pages.
3. Use CSS Sprites For Images
Combining the images, stylesheets, and scripts into CSS Sprites is always a proven trick to speed up a website. It is the best way to minimize the number of HTTP requests for a web page, resulting in faster loading speed.
4. Optimize The Images
It is always an intelligent move to optimize your images by simply assigning the appropriate file format to your images. Try to use GIF, JPEG and PNG formats file formats as they dramatically decrease the file size of an image. Moreover, if possible, avoid using a larger size image.
You can also use image editors like Photoshop to resize the size of an image instead of using HTML’s width and height attributes and lowers the file size, resulting in decreased page loading times. Another trick is to compress all images by using the default image compressor built into Google’s Page Speed plugin and then, use the compressed image version.
5. Make Use Browser Caching
Enable browser caching for your website as it helps in the faster loading of a page. It is a technology that comes handy in informing a website visitor’s browser to store copies of website’s pages in advance and show them in future on user’s demand – rather than reloading the whole web page. There are two simple ways to enable browser caching. you can either take advantage of the WordPress W3 Total Cache tool or integrate browser caching into your website’s coding structure.