Speeding up a slow loading website

Posted November 1, 2017 by Unlimited

The speed that your website loads at impacts user experience and your page ranking. If your site is slow to load you also increase the chance that the user will go elsewhere. This is even more of an issue with users that are viewing your site on a mobile device, and who may not be on a fast connection.

Luckily, there are a number of ways that you can improve the speed of your website without too much effort or technical knowledge.

Caching

When a user visits a website, certain elements are stored in a cache. This means that when a user returns to the site later, the stored elements can be quickly displayed.
If you are using a CMS like WordPress, then you can simply install a plugin like W3 Total Cache. This will take care of your websites site wide caching automatically, or it can be set to only cache certain elements.

Avoid plugins and add-ons that demand a lot of resources

If your site is using a lot of plugins it’s worth taking a look at any that you can afford to not have running. You can use tools such as Google Pagespeed Insights to get an idea of how fast your site is loading, and then disable your plugins one at a time and re-run the test. This takes a little time to do, but it is an easy way to identify and problem plugins that may be slowing down your site. You can also look at moving any JavaScript you have in the header to the footer, this will allow the page to load the content without waiting for the JavaScript to load.

Optimise your images

Large image files can slow down your site, and in most cases the files can be compressed and optimised with no perceivable loss of quality. You can optimise your images in Photoshop or GIMP, or if you are using a WordPress site you can automate the process using the WPSmush plugin. You can also compress any video files your site uses with programmes like Handbrake.

Minimise your code

Minifying your code helps load the page faster and is easy to implement. There are a number of free tools available on web that can minify your CSS, Javascript and HTML files. If you are using a WordPress site, you can use the Better WordPress Minify plugin, or if you are not using a CMS you can use the Pagespeed Insights Chrome Extension to create a minified version of your site.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

If you are looking to speed up the mobile experience of your website, then look into implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), this can dramatically improve your page loading times.

Categories: Technology