Are you a blogger and looking out for ways to boost your website’s performance? Then you should definitely work on your page speed. In fact, page speed is one of the most critical aspects of a website’s performance. So, if you have not focused on it yet, then it’s time you should spend some time working on it!
However, you may find it impossible to improve until you understand how this statistic works — particularly, the elements that drive it.
This is why we have decided to simplify this for you today. In this blog, we will take you through various subjects like:
- What is page speed?
- Why does page speed matter?
- Case studies to assert the importance of a great page speed
- How to enhance your website’s page speed?
Are you ready? Let’s get you going!
Table of Contents
What is page speed?
A page speed is referred to as the time it takes for a browser to receive the first byte from a web server or for all the material on a given page to be displayed. In layman’ language, the time it takes for a webpage to load is known as page speed.
The page’s server, HTML code, CSS file used to style page elements, different JavaScript files, photos, videos, and other multimedia, are some of the many elements that have an impact on how quickly a page loads.
Another important fact for you to know is that page speed is measured separately on both desktop and mobile devices. This is because of the difference in technology in both devices.
Mostly, people use site speed and page speed interchangeably. However, both are quite different from one another.
Wondering how? We got you covered!
A website’s average page load speed is calculated using several test pages. On the other hand, page speed refers to how long a user will hold off before beginning to consume the content on a particular page.
Why Page Speed Matters?
If proving a great user experience is one of your goals then you will have to enhance your page speed as much as you can.
Remember: High Page Speed = Great User Experience
One analysis emphasizes the significance of having an efficient page speed-” It’s worth noting that even a delay of just one second can lead to a reduction in conversions by 4.42% for each subsequent second.”
Therefore, if you’re running an online business, slow loading speeds can have a significantly detrimental impact on revenue loss.
In addition, the speed at which your website loads also impacts your company’s competitiveness. A poor loading experience can result in 79% of online buyers being less likely to make repeat purchases from your website, while 64% would choose to shop with a different online retailer altogether.
Additionally, poor page speed will also bring down your SEO scores. For Google, customers or users are of top priority, therefore, if your website leaves the customer dissatisfied then there’s no way it can master SEO.
Do you know? The probability of bounce increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.
Evidently, page speed is one of the most critical factors in enhancing a website’s performance. So, it needs to be given some extra attention.
If you are still not convinced then here are some case studies to help you understand the importance of page speed- read on!
Top 5 Case Studies
1. Vodafone
Vodafone discovered that improving Core Web Vitals had a beneficial influence on the customer journey after conducting an evenly weighed A/B test on a landing page. The test compared two visually and functionally similar pages; the optimized page performed 31% better than the baseline page in terms of LCP. Sales increased by 8% as a result of the optimized landing page, according to the findings.
2. Yelp
In order to provide advertisers more control over their ad campaigns, Yelp recently incorporated additional options. However, they sacrificed performance when they incorporated these additional capabilities, since the time it took for a page to load rose from 3 to 6 seconds. By improving FCP and TTI measurements, the development team was able to overcome this slowness and created a website that offers a fantastic user experience while also increasing conversions by 15%.
3. Pfizer
Pfizer can reach more patients with information and help them navigate their health care more quickly, just by prioritizing mobile speed.
Their websites now load 38% faster overall, and the bounce rate has dropped by 20%.
Takeaway: if you’re investing a lot of time and effort in directing users to your mobile site then it makes sense to provide them with an efficient user experience.
4. Akamai
Even milliseconds matter, according to Akamai’s analysis of data from over 10 billion visits to the most popular retail websites. Over half of mobile shoppers will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds, and even the tiniest amount of time can cause them to purchase elsewhere. Conversion rates can be reduced by delays even as small as one millisecond.
5. TUI
TUI started an organizational reorganization to enhance its site performance after realizing that no matter what price points or discounts they offered, revenue can not increase as long as customers were still leaving the site due to its poor speed.
With support from executives and cross-team cooperation, the engineering team was able to meet speed targets considerably more quickly. This restructuring resulted in a 78% reduction in load time and a 31% reduction in bounce rate.
Takeaway
High Page Speed= Low Bounce Rate= High Conversion Rates= Greater User Experience= More Business
How To Enhance Your Website’s Page Speed?
Until now, you must be convinced about the importance of great page speed. This is why, you should now focus more on knowing what factors can affect the page speed, right?
Let’s dive in!
Top 10 Factors That Affect The Page Speed
1. Web Hosting Solution
No one wants to sit around these days as the website whirls and loads slowly. Not even you, we are sure!
As mentioned above, quickly loading websites perform better in terms of user experience, conversion rates, and engagement. Therefore, having high-availability web hosting plans is crucial.
Various hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee to represent the duration for which their web server remains accessible without any issues. It is recommended to choose a service provider with an uptime guarantee of at least 99.90%. While the difference between 99.90% and 99.95% uptime may seem insignificant in terms of fractions of a percentage, it translates to a reduction of downtime by 4 hours and 23 minutes annually.
2. Number Of HTTP Requests
The more HTTP requests sent from a browser to one server and from one server to another, the more will be the bandwidth used. Therefore, limit the number of HTTP requests as much as you can.
3. File Size
The size of the assets put into the browser always affects how quickly the page will load. Therefore, having more assets with the minimum file size is beneficial. Less bandwidth will be needed as a result of enhancing the load time.
4. The Coding Style
A website’s page performance and SEO ranking will always be impacted by poor code. It is wise to adhere to best practices right from the outset of development. Therefore, choose a coder that has good knowledge rather than cutting down on your development costs and regretting later.
5. Plugins
Plugins pack your website with additional features. However, if you use a lot of plugins then it will bulk your server making your website slow.
Cut to the basics, only add a plugin if needed and this will help you enhance your website performance considerably.
6. Browser
The outdated versions of web browsers may not support the modern assets and code used on your webpages, which can affect the average loading speed of the pages. To address this, it’s essential to ensure that you’re using the latest version of your preferred web browser. You can quickly resolve this issue by configuring your browser to update itself automatically, which will also help you stay up-to-date with the latest features and improvements.
7. Cache
In order to enhance accessibility, your computer’s cache saves website data onto your hard drive as you visit different sites. When you return to a website, the cached data can be retrieved, allowing the website to load faster.
If you clear your cache, however, the websites that you frequently visit will likely take longer to load as the cached data will need to be rebuilt.
8. Number Of Redirect Links
The duration of a DNS lookup depends on the number of redirections. This means, the greater the number of redirects, the greater will be the time taken by the DNS to increase the page load speed.
9. Sourcing Content From Other Websites
The performance and load time of your website may also be impacted if you use content from other websites.
10. Traffic Volume
Many websites have a predetermined bandwidth limit. This refers to the volume of data moved over a specific time frame, usually a month. High traffic volume is a positive indicator, but if your server doesn’t have enough bandwidth to handle it, you risk having your website completely shut down until your subscription period renews or you increase your plan.
So, as by now, you have learned about various factors affecting your website’s performance, let us quickly jump onto our last and the most important section- “How To Improve Your Website Speed?”
How To Enhance Your Website’s Page Speed?
1. Test Your Website’s Speed
There are several online resources available on your computer that can provide insights into your website’s loading speed. Tools like GTmetrix can show you the number of files being loaded and the duration it takes for each file to load.
This information can help you identify if any particular plugin is utilizing too many resources, allowing you to seek alternative solutions to achieve the same outcome. Another tool to consider is Google’s Pagespeed Insights. Simply entering your URL can provide advice on reducing your website’s load time as well as speed metrics.
2. Image Optimization
Do you know? On average, 21% of the web page is made up of graphics, And like nothing else, large, poorly optimized graphics may make your website sluggish and clunky. Your website’s visitors won’t hang around until it loads, and optimizing your images will help to a great extent.
There is a lot of information available on the web. So go ahead and explore The Best Image Optimization Tools & CDNs to Increase Website Speed.
Additionally, the size of an image’s file can be significantly reduced by switching to a different file format.
- For graphics with limited colors, such as logos, GIF is perfect.
- JPEG works well for images like photographs that have a lot of color and detail.
- When you require high-quality transparent photos, PNG is the format to use.
3. Optimize Database
If you use a CMS like WordPress, all of your website’s encrypted and textual data, including posts, comments, and pages, are stored in a single database. However, this database can accumulate unnecessary information over time, such as discarded pages and posts, post revisions, and spam or unapproved comments.
To enhance the speed at which web hosting servers can retrieve requested content, you can reduce the size of your database by removing these elements. This will considerably improve your website’s performance.
4. Reduce The Code
Your page speed can be significantly increased by optimizing your code (including deleting spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters).
You can also eliminate formatting, extra code, and coding comments to make your code lightweight. To do this, Google advises using UglifyJS and CSSNano.
5. Reduce The HTTP Requests Wherever Possible
A large portion of websites requires browsers to send multiple HTTP requests to retrieve various resources, such as graphics or other files. These requests are often crucial for the functionality and appearance of the page, but they can also slow down the overall loading time as each request requires a round trip to and from the server hosting the resource. Additionally, if any of the hosts experience issues, it can impact the loading speed of the entire page since it relies on resources from multiple sources.
To mitigate these potential issues, it’s important to minimize the number of assets required for each page and conduct speed tests to identify any HTTP queries that are causing significant delays.
6. Reduce The Number Of External Scripts
When a webpage loads, any scripted elements that need external loading, such as lead-generation popups or Click-to-action buttons, are also loaded. Depending on their size, these scripts can cause a webpage to load slowly or cause “text jumping” issues, which can be particularly frustrating for mobile users.
7. Enable Compression
Large pages can be reduced in size by zipping them. Compression lowers your pages’ bandwidth, which lowers HTTP response. One tool that is frequently used for this is gzip.
Since Gzip is used by 90% of today’s Internet traffic, you can also give it a try! Set up your server to support compression after Gzip Compression.
8. Caching
The waiting period visitors experience each time they visit your site will be eliminated by temporarily storing data on the visitor’s hard disc.
Browser caching can be used for this. However, the length of time that this data is kept depends on how your server-side cache is set up. You must modify your HTTP headers to set expiry times for specific file types in order to enable browser caching.
9. Work On Your Content
Compressing the content of your website can make a significant difference in load times. Instead of sending a request containing numerous files, all of your web page data is sent via HTTP compression in a single, smaller file. See this HTTP Compression article on Wikipedia for further details.
By merging and minifying the source code of your JavaScript and CSS files, you may also optimize and compress them.
CONCLUSION
If you care about giving your users the best possible experience, you shouldn’t disregard the power of great page speed.
Follow our tips given above to achieve this. To help you with this, here is a short recap of the tips given above:
- Test Your Website’s Speed
- Image Optimization
- Optimize Database
- Reduce The Code
- Lower the HTTP Requests Wherever Possible
- Reduce The Number Of External Scripts
- Enable Compression
- Caching
- Work On Your Content
Let us know if you have any suggestions and your favorite tips discussed so far.
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