We all know the problem from somewhere. You search for something on Google and see a promising website. The meta text speaks to you, the title looks like you’ve found what you’re looking for and you click. But then nothing happens for a while and you only see a white page. A block of text slowly builds up, the colour is added and finally two images load. Unfortunately, you might not remember the pictures because you clicked away a long time ago. The website loading times are not only important for the user but also play a decisive role in other things. Today I’ll tell you 7 tips on how to optimize/minimize your website loading time.
Why are website loading times important?
On the one hand, the loading time plays a role for the user and, on the other hand, it is also relevant for the Google ranking. Therefore, you should ensure that the loading time of your website is not too long and that you can use it without any problems and as smoothly as possible.
RANKED BY GOOGLE
If you want to rank higher in search results, then you should think about optimizing your web page load time. This has to do with the fact that the ranking includes the user experience. The faster your website loads, the better the ranking. And that’s because…
HIGH USER FRIENDLINESS
If you now want to say it in technical language, then you could speak of a good user experience. This means that the user does not feel disturbed by the loading times. Almost half of all users jump off after just 3 seconds. In addition, a long loading time has a negative effect on the length of stay and the rate of “returns”.
SALES ARE LOST
Studies have shown that waiting times that are too long can even lead to a lack of sales. It has been found that as much as 7% of conversions are lost if the page loads too slowly. If you look at this rate using an example, it becomes clear that it is “only” 7%, but it can really make a difference above a certain turnover. This loss is simply unnecessary and should be incentive enough to optimize the website loading time.
How long should your page be allowed to load?
There is no general answer to this question because the requirements for each website are different. However, as a guide, you can take 2 seconds. This is roughly the threshold from which the user experience is negatively influenced.
External factors – you can’t do anything about that
Optimizing website loading times does not work if the slow loading of the page is caused by external factors. If the searcher’s bandwidth is simply too low, then it is clear that the page cannot load quickly. But that is less dramatic since the person will then already be used to the longer waiting pages. In addition, there is little you can do with the browser cache – it may not have been emptied by users for a long time, which means that the page load is massively slower.
Now to my 7 tips for website load time optimization
Now I’ll tell you the 7 simple tricks you can use to rank better, make more sales and achieve higher user satisfaction!
1. OPTIMIZE IMAGES
A lot of people forget that, and it’s actually that simple. Depending on how many images you want to place on your page, a larger amount of data can accumulate unprocessed. There are now different programs (or online applications) that massively reduce the size of your image files, with very little loss of quality. In the view on the website, this will not be noticed at all and yet the user has to load significantly fewer data before the website is displayed.
2. MINIMIZE CSS AND JAVASCRIPT
Especially in CSS and JavaScript, there are more and more spaces and line breaks that are simply not needed. You can often merge lines separated by whitespace. This may not matter much in individual cases, but it is noticeable in the totality of the page during the loading time. You don’t have to do it all by hand. There are special tools to help you with this. An example would be YUI Compressor!
3. USE SERVER-SIDE CACHING
This method caches an HTML document. This contains the important elements of the website – the basics, so to speak. If the potential customer or prospect visits your site a second time, the data is not reloaded from the server but can be obtained from the cache. This is much faster.
4. BUY DEDICATED SERVERS
If you host your website with a host, then it can happen that more than 50 websites are running on the same server. It is clear that this has a negative effect on the loading time, especially with a high volume of requests. If you host on a dedicated server, then you can adapt the hardware to your website’s needs.
5. AVOID REACHING INTO THE VOID
When someone accesses your site and wants to open a document, image, or anything else that isn’t there, it leads to a chain of different operations that result in your site’s loading time is negatively impacted.
You can easily avoid these bad requests by replacing the incorrect files with the correct ones and ensuring a clear structure.
6. USE CSS STYLE SHEET
With the CSS formatting, different parameters can be regulated. But if you integrate new CSS commands in each HTML code, then a new query is required for each element, which takes up loading time that would not be necessary.
It is much easier and more efficient to put all CSS files in one style sheet.
7. PRIORITIZATION
Last but not least, it makes sense to prioritize the content of your site. This means that you should first load internally what is absolutely necessary (inline in the HTML code). Everything beyond that can be built up gradually, so that after a short time everything or the most important thing is displayed, at least in the visible area.
