5 Efficient Ways To Improve Your Website Load Speed For Small Businesses
Importance Of Website Load Time
Website load speed is not only critical for the best user experience, it also greatly impacts your search rankings. Even a second delay can significantly reduce pageviews, visitor satisfaction, drop conversions and generally affect online traction. The loading time of your site affects your organic search rankings. Since 2010, Google has been accounting for a website speed in its algorithm. A rule of thumb is that a 100-200 millisecond Website load speed is a good benchmark to strive for and maintain.
There are many ways you can achieve a faster website loading speed such as image compression or reduction of active script calls. We’ll review a few that should give you immediate and effective improvements.
What Slows Down Website Load Speed
If we had to pick a single most important issue, size would be the biggest factor contributing to your website’s loading speed. Your browser must take time to download the code that makes up your page, which can include your scripts and images, HTML and your style sheets. The more code you have the longer it will take to download all the data. With new sites being designed every day, web surfers are consistently looking for more engaging and dynamic pages to visit. As a web owner you are faced with pressure from both ends when it comes to site speed vs. its dynamism and interactivity. Some useful site speed analysis tools include;
How To Improve Website Load Speed
So now that you know the importance of website speed, here are some tried and effective methods you can use on your own site to put some pep in its step:
- Enable Browser Caching to store temporary data on your visitor’s system so that they don’t have to download the same things every time they load a page. Some tools that can help you with browser caching include IIS Caching, Nginx Caching and Apache Caching.
- To significantly increase your page loading speed, you have to start by reducing its size. Some sources report up to a 70% reduction in CSS and HTML file sizes.
- Optimize Images on your site by ensuring they are appropriately scaled down to size before uploading them to your website. You can also compress your images with free media compression tools like tinypng.com that can dramatically reduce your image size without sacrificing quality.
- Optimize Your CSS. Because CSS must load before visitors can see your site, optimizing your CSS results in faster file downloads and quicker access to new pages that must be loaded will be to your advantage. Minimizing excess CSS files is also another technique you can use for more speed. A good tool for CSS minimization is CSS MINIfier, if your CMS does not have a CSS minimizing option.
- Properly position external Javascript files at the bottom of your page, just before the close of your body tag so that more of your site can load before your scripts begin.
It can only take a single second delay to deter a user from visiting or returning to your site and you closing a lead. Try to keep your site pages loading as quickly and efficiently as possible, this will greatly affect productivity and improve the growth of small businesses.
Related:Creating A Strong Call To Action For Small Businesses
It is critical to understand how fast your website is. You can do so by following Google’s recommended link. Some factors influence the page load speed of your website. Some factors are within your control, while many require the assistance of a professional.
This is where Rooah come into the picture! Rooah has a well-trained team ready to solve any issues you may encounter, as well as high-quality technical support and hands-on expertise efficient for your business. Contact Rooah! we are your one stop shop to get all the help you need.
