Improve Your Page Load Times - 3 Top Tips
We all know how quick search engines like Google are, when a user carries out a search, the results are almost instant, what is also great is, if your website is top of the pile (speak to Pebble about SEO if this is not the case). Then, if the user clicks through to your website and their speedy search progress slows down dramatically when arriving on your website, then you have major issues.
We won't go into the psychology in this post on user journeys and experiences but there are fundamental issues here.
A recent study shows that a one second delay in page load time can result in up to 11% fewer page views, and 7% loss in conversions, with 40% of people abandoning a website completely if it takes more than three seconds to load. As well as this, page loading speed is one of many factors that affect the SEO rankings of your website.
Let's get right into the 3 top tips for improving your page load times.
1. Optimise Your Images
Often overlooked but the bigger the image, the longer it takes for a browser to download them, when we speak about big, we don't necessarily mean the height and width of an image, we are talking filesize. There is no general rule on the size of your images but if you have downloaded an image from a stock photo site or from your camera it is likely they will be massive in size. A great tool for seeing how big the images are on your website is by going over to https://tools.pingdom.com/ and putting your website in there to have a look.
Consider using a tool like https://compressor.io/compress to compress your images and then upload them back to your website.
2. Get Your Javascript Below The Fold
Most websites use Javascript these days, whether it is JQuery, plugins or Google Maps. The only Javascript you should have at the top of the page are the ones that make the site load initially, the user will not notice the Javascript loading at the bottom. An alternative is the make use of async or defer attributes but this is a little too technical for this post. Speak to us at Pebble for more information.
3. Compress Your Web Pages
if your site is great (like Pebble) and is full of high-quality images then the page file size is going to be big (meaning slow). So similar to optimising your images you can also compress your actual web pages using gzip compression. This is normally a setting on your server hosting panel. If this is a little over your head then you can reach out to your web design agency or speak to us at Pebble on 01733 902070 or email us via our contact page.
We hope this quick post on how to improve your page load times provides you with useful information. For more information about getting your website performing better and turning customers into sales contact Pebble on 01733 902070 or send us an email via our contact form.
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