Best Practices to Improve the Performance and Speed of Your Website!

Best Practices to Improve the Performance and Speed of Your Website!

When it comes to the performance of a website, the only thing that has the utmost importance is speed. Especially for businesses, it becomes crucial to have a faster-running website to provide the best user experience. Not only is a slow-running site frustrating but it also provides a high bouncing rate.

A high-performance website with a low page load time can help you have high return visits and low bounce rates. As a result, the conversions and engagements become higher, thanks to the better user experience. In this guide, you will find some of the easiest yet quickest practices to improve your website’s performance.

Need for Website Speed Optimization

Why does your website need speed optimization? Because the more the page load time, more the bounce rate. With every second the site takes to load, the chances of users closing the browser window increase.
Speed optimization helps by influencing the factors essential for the success of your website. These factors are:

⦁ Conversion

Conversion becomes essential for a business to succeed. A higher website conversion rate means that the website is able to influence the visitors to take the steps you want them to. In simpler words, it helps you sell your services and products to more visitors.
Though you may have previously thought that it has nothing to do with speed, research says the opposite. A delay of 1 second can lower this rate by 7%. Thus, with every second your website takes to load, your business is suffering a huge loss.

⦁ Visibility

Visibility is another factor that is highly driven by the speed of the website. With a high-performing website, you provide a good user experience which results in a higher rank. With faster loading website and good SEO service, you can easily achieve a higher Google ranking.

⦁ Usability

With good website page speed and load time, your website becomes more responsive to the user. It directly impacts the usability of the site as customers’ satisfaction also increases. Hence, the overall user experience is enhanced.

Quick Ways to Speed Up Your Website

Now that you know the importance of speeding up, here are quick ways to do it:

1. Use a CDN or Content Delivery Network

A content delivery network or CDN is a set of multiple web servers that have been distributed across numerous locations. These servers provide the end users with the web content with regard to their location. A CND works by redirecting the user requests to the nearest server. As a result, the load time is decreased to a great extent.
On the other hand, if you host your website on a single server, the time required to process all the requests increases. The main cause of this is the handling of all user requests by the same hardware. With a content delivery network, this issue is easily solved.

2. Select the Right Hosting Service Plan

There are majorly three types of hosting:

⦁ Shared hosting

⦁ Virtual Private Servers hosting or VPS hosting

⦁ Dedicated server

In case you are looking for the cheapest option for hosting, you can go for Shared hosting. As the name suggests, in this server hosting, you have to share CPU, RAM, and disk space with all those websites that chose this server hosting. Ultimately, this sharing makes this type of server comparatively slower than the other two.
When it comes to VPS hosting, it uses numerous servers for distributing content. In this type of hosting, you still have to share the server with the other users. However, you are also provided with a pat of the virtual server where you don’t have to worry about your configurations influencing others or vice versa.
If you have a good amount to splurge, a dedicated server may be the right choice for you. It is the most expensive one among the three as you need to pay a server rent. Also, you have to hire a system administrator responsible for the server’s maintenance.

3. Make Use of Website Caching

Caching is another great yet easy way to speed up your website. It stores copies of your website’s file. When a new user accesses your website, the server needs to do less work to generate the web page. Hence, the loading time is reduced by manifolds. You can contact a good software development company to get the best possible software for this task.

4. Decrease the Number of Plugins

Even though plugins are essential and common components for a website, too many of them can slow down the working of your site. The more plugins, the more the number of resources are needed to run them. Over time, your website may have those plugins that are not even needed anymore.
So you need to run a couple of performance tests to identify which plugins are slowing down your website. Besides the number, the quality of the plugins is also a factor that hinders the speed of a website.

5. Optimize the Size of Images

Images are one way to catch the attention of the user and increase engagement. However, if there are too many large files, the website is slowed down. Thus, it is suggested to compress and optimize all the images you want to use on your website. You can always use a couple of plugins or tools to compress the image’s size.

6. Minimize the Number of CSS Files and JavaScript

A website with too many JavaScript and CSS files generates a lot of HTTP requests when a user wants access to particular files. Since the user’s browser treats each request individually, the website speed takes a toll. One simple solution to this problem is reducing the number of these files. You can also try grouping CSS files and JavaScript for faster speed.

Though improving the performance of a website seems important, you can easily do it by being attentive and consistent. With the help of these practices and JvaTec’s website support and maintenance services you will speed up your website in no time.