If you want to increase your website speed and performance then this article will help you to make it fix by using GTMetrix. What is GTMetrix? GTmetrix is a free tool that analyzes your website loading time and page speed by using Google Page speed score and YSlow score.
With to help of WordPress free plugin we will reduce the page load time also reduce your page size. So, Lets get in to it.
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Now you have to go to ‘Settings‘. When you hover on settings then you will see ‘ShortPixel Al‘ in the list, click on it.
Now two tabs will appear on the screen ‘General‘ and ‘Advanced‘. You don’t need to change anything in the rest tabs.
Go to the ‘General’ Setting tab and make sure that all the setup is configured properly like the compression level should be ‘Lossless’ and WebP support ‘Checked’ and Fade-in effect ‘Checked’. Then click on Save Changes.
Go to the ‘Advanced’ tab. ‘API URL’ will be remain the same as configured automatically. Replace method ‘SRC’ & ‘Excluded URLs‘ should be the same as per default settings.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Shortpixel Al Advance Settings
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Now click on ‘Save Changes’ don’t do anything else. The API URL of the ShortPixel Al will take your images data and optimize your website images automatically.
Go to GTMetrix again type your domain URL and execute the test of page speed. This time you will observe that your Serve Scale Images error fixed and it reduce the time of page load and performance at the same time.
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]The biggest factor contributing to the success of any business’ website is user experience (UX). A crucial element of UX is a fast-responding website. So how to improve your website?
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Research indicates that 47% of web users expect a web page to load in under two seconds. Moreover, 40% of web users leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. And even a second delay in web page response times can cause a 7% drop in conversions.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Page load speed directly affects customer engagement, conversion rates, SEO, and brand promotion. Choosing the right web hosting provider and service plan will optimize website performance.
Uncompressed web page files such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Javascript (JS) files can slow page load times. Large, unoptimized image files also impede web page load speeds.
Many eCommerce websites use third party scripts for cookies, advertising, analytics, social networking, and apps. Delays in load times occur when a browser detects a third-party script, loading data from multiple databases sourced from hidden party servers. Thus, it’s best to keep third-party services to a minimum.
Another means to improve a website’s load times is to enable browser caching. This will improve response times for returning visitors.
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Does The Hosting Provider Offer A Contact Delivery Network (CDN)?
To optimize load speeds to users worldwide, ensure the web hosting provider offers contact delivery networks (CDNs). Without the benefit of a CDN, a website’s content is sourced from just one server serving global visitors from all continents.
For example, if a visitor from New Zealand accesses content hosted on an origin server in Europe, inevitably, response times will lag. A worldwide CDN has points-of-presence (POPs) spread around the globe, routing website requests to the nearest CDN POP. Reducing the physical distance between a responding server and a requesting location greatly decreases load and response times.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]A CDN is vital to optimizing worldwide UX. Researchers have found that, on average, a CDN slashes website lag (latency) by 83% compared to websites without a CDN.
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Web Hosting Plans Matter
The type of web hosting plan a business uses will impact user response times and UX. A shared hosting plan, while the least expensive option, is also the least robust in terms of performance, security, and flexibility.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]A shared hosting server accommodates multiple websites, all of which share the server’s resources such as available bandwidth, CPU, RAM, and memory. If a website suffers from slow web page loads and response times, the first step is to upgrade to a more powerful hosting solution.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Dedicated server hosting will greatly improve website performance. However, this option comes at a relatively high cost. A more economical choice is a virtual private server (VPS) solution, which delivers most of the advantages of a dedicated server.
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When considering web host providers, part of one’s due diligence is to evaluate the storage devices they use. Find out if their servers deploy solid-state drives (SSDs). Faster and more reliable than legacy hard disk drives (HDDs), SSDs achieve greater speed through more efficient data throughput and much faster seek times. Moreover, SSDs are an eco-friendly choice as they use less energy than HDDs.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]What web server software does the hosting provider use? While Apache HTTP is widely used across multiple computing platforms, some hosting providers now rely on faster technologies such LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) or Nginx.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Another important consideration is the web host’s relational database management system (RDMS). The most popular DB engine is Oracle’s MySQL but the MariaDB RDMS-a variant of MySQL-delivers faster performance.
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Free online tools are available to test a website’s speed. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights or the Pingdom Web Site Speed Test to determine any possible chokepoints. These tests grade websites and note what elements can be improved.
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]A fast website is crucial in maintaining a positive user experience. Evidence suggests that users become distracted if there is even a one-second delay. Every second after that increases the likelihood the end-user will leave. This is why it’s imperative your website loads quickly. This article will briefly address a number of methods that you can use to speed up your website loading time.
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1. Reduce File Sizes
The amount of content that can be delivered in a discrete amount of time is limited by a finite amount of bandwidth. All things being equal, the larger the files on a site, the longer it takes for them to load. While large file sizes may not have much of an impact on users who use extremely high-speed connections (such as T1 or T3 connections), it will impact those running on slower hookups.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]The best way to reduce file sizes is to run your images through various optimization techniques. Some techniques include:
Compressing images via tools such as Photoshop and/or Compress PNG. There are several image compression tools out there that make it simple to make files smaller.
Resizing your image so it’s smaller. The smaller it is, the faster it loads.
Picking a file type appropriate for your image. Typically, you’ll choose between JPEG, GIF, and PNG. JPEG is great for quality in a small size, GIFs should only be used for thumbnails and as decorative images, and PNGs are excellent because their quality won’t degrade with re-saves.
Sometimes, you might need to consider eliminating some files. The less your website has to load, the better.
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After reducing file sizes, compress images on the server using HTTP compression. This will reduce the amount of bandwidth required to load content, thus improving the speed of your website.
One way you can compress files is with Gzip compressing. Gzip can compress HTML, JavasScript, XML, CSS, fonts, and just about anything you render on your site. Gzipping can be enabled on an Apache server using the mod_deflate module in your root .htaccess file and adding a filter for each file type that your site delivers.
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3. Caching For Improving Website Loading Time
If a website requires a webpage load every time there is a unique visit, then every file that you have on the page needs to be downloaded individually. This includes everything from the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and any other assets your site provides. This can lead to slow load times for a particular webpage.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]The best way to prevent this is to use the caching function most browsers have built-in. Doing so will speed up the response time of a page on subsequent visits.
In addition to this, you can let browsers know to serve a cached version of a webpage by adding Expires Headers. These headers tell the browser which content is static and which content is dynamic. This is a great option to cut some of the load time for repeat visitors.
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Too many calls to the server can lead to significant slowdowns of your website. Sending any request to a server requires full communication, including a request and response, before the page can be rendered. To increase website loading speed.
Here are a number of ways you can reduce HTTP calls.
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Use CSS Image Sprites
Creating CSS image sprites is one easy way to reduce the number of server calls your website receives. Instead of loading 20 individual images to a site, sprites load one large image containing all the necessary elements in it so it can be zeroed in using CSS.
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Reduce Your HTTP Redirects
If several 3xx response codes appear on your website, you are likely sending users to get information from too many locations. Avoid doing this, even if it is for SEO purposes.
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Fix Broken Links to Files
Anytime your site sends instructions to a server to look for a file that doesn’t exist, a 404 error will appear. Too many 404s can increase your page load time.
Take the time to fix any 404s you come across. Doing so will significantly improve your website and website loading speed.
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5. Optimize Your Dynamic Content to Improve Website Loading Time
Minify
While a blank space within CSS and JavaScript files may appear to be empty to the human eye, each blank character must be read and processed by the browser engine. In cases such as these, make sure to minify by reducing the number of blank characters in files. Doing so will decrease the amount of time it takes a web browser to render content.
There are several free tools you can use to minify your files:
Some sites automatically convert HTML into an in-site scripting language. As you can imagine, the time it takes to convert HTML can slow down your website. It’s better for your website if your content is delivered as raw HTML.
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CSS at the Top/JavaScript at the Bottom
CSS should be placed near the top of your page. This ensures the page loads right away and is rendered properly.
JavaScript can take a while to load, so you want it near the bottom of the page. This way it runs after the rest of the page loads. With CSS near the top, this will make sure users at least have content while the rest of the webpage loads.
If you are using a small amount of JavaScript, avoid calling it in a separate file. Instead, to reduce HTTP requests, include JavaScript code directly on the page.
Note: if you intend to use any popular JavaScript libraries, use a CDN to deliver your content to take advantage of the fact that many people will already have these downloaded in their browser caches. This will significantly reduce page load time.
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Writing well-designed query database calls can have a significant impact on the time it takes for content to be delivered to your site. Poorly written queries can have a pronounced negative effect on page load time. This is particularly true for sites that have quite a bit of traffic and/or deliver a large number of products.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]While database optimization is a large topic, here are a few quick tips.
One of the most common mistakes made by developers is to use a wildcard query to retrieve results. Take, for instance:
“select * from table_name”
A large table can slow you down quite a bit. If you don’t need every field, request individual keys from the table, like so:
“select field1, field2 from table_name”
Other ways you can improve performance include making sure that the database is properly indexed, reducing correlated subqueries, and avoiding temporary tables.
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7. Hosting Provider
A website is only as fast as its weakest link, so choosing a good web provider and plan may prove to be a crucial factor in delivering your site at optimum speeds. If you’re using large central providers such as AWS, you may wish to use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
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8. Use a CDN to Reduce Latency
Physical distance from the server can increase the time it takes for a server to respond to an HTTP request. By using CDNs, you can place servers in different locations around the globe, which will reduce load times for people in different regions.
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Final Notes
This is only a small sampling of different techniques one can use to speed up a website. Each one could easily be covered in more detail. However, you may wish to use this piece as a checklist of techniques you can try if your site has slow response times.
Not sure if your website is running slow? That’s where Airbrake’s Performance Monitoring comes in. Our developer-centric Performance Monitoring software gives you the tools you need to make sure your app or website is running smoothly and quickly. With Performance Monitoring, you’ll have access to requests and response times, Apdex Score, error occurrences, and so much more. Try Airbrake Performance Monitoring today with a free 30-day trial where you’ll get unlimited performance events, error monitoring, unlimited users, and unlimited projects.
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Website speed is much important now a days. And check here in this article how to improve the website speed of your site.
Page loading speed is more vital now than it’s ever been, as the rising number of mobile devices makes a speedy site not just “nice to have” but absolutely essential.
Page load speed has always been an important consideration when creating websites. But as more consumers are spending time researching products and services on mobile devices, they want to be able to complete tasks and make purchases quickly. A fast site is a key part of that. But how fast does your website need to be? And what’s the impact on your bottom line? In this article, we look at these questions and try to find some answers with our deep dive into website speed.
First, let’s cover the basics. When we talk about website speed, we’re really talking about load time, which is how quickly you can get the information on your server rendered correctly on a user’s device. Load times are measured in seconds and milliseconds. According to Google, if pages have a loading time of more than one second it damages the user experience. Google admits that a sub-one second page load time is a massive goal, and the variety of network types and speeds for accessing mobile content makes the issue more acute.
Before you can improve your site’s load time, you need to establish how fast it actually is. Fortunately, there are free tools available that help with this. Google Developers offers a website tool that includes information about where your site speed is good or bad, broken out between mobile and desktop. Just plug in your URL and you get a quick assessment of how your site loads both on mobile and desktop interfaces.
It uses a simple traffic light system so you can see how your site is doing and provides recommendations for areas you should fix or should consider fixing. Along with this, you get a snapshot of how your site will look on a typical mobile device, which allows you to address areas like menus and logos that take up too much space. Google’s mobile help site also provides a number of tips on improving the mobile experience to help you reach the goal of a one second page load.
Using these tools, you can determine your site’s load time. Which takes us to our next step — finding out how fast it should be. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
How Fast Does Your Site Need to Be?
The speed you should aim to achieve depends in part on what sort of site you have and what page you’re loading. Take, for instance, an ecommerce site. Generally for ecommerce, the page users land on first need to load much faster than the final pages of the buying process. That’s because visitors willingness to stay on a site increases along with their investment in that site.
Simply, the longer someone is on your site (say, completing a purchase), the more willing they are to stay, and less likely to be affected by load speed. The best way to determine how fast your page should be is to look generally at what other sites are doing. After all, it is a user’s experience across the internet as a whole that sets their expectations for what is fast and slow. Moz pulled together some data on this and this is what they found:
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]For your highly trafficked pages, any landing pages, and any internal pages that attract an unusual amount of inbound traffic, we’d recommend aiming to be in the top 10% of pages on the internet, with a load time of about 1 second. This correlates with a finding that half of all web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less. Of course, these guidelines should not be taken as law because a number of other factors play into the importance of load times. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
If you have qualified traffic landing on your site, for example, an internal page is ranking well for a recurring long tail keyword search, load times are less important because users are pre-qualified – they’ve specifically sought out your page. They’ll likely wait an extra second or more for it to load. On the other hand, site speed is absolutely critical for traffic where the user is poised to click away. This would include highly unqualified traffic, like traffic from PPC ads (especially if you’re bidding on keywords). Which brings us to the question of: what’s it going to cost you?
As we have seen, that depends on a number of factors. But there is a pretty clear relationship between load time and bounce. Google recently published a report showing the likelihood of abandonment the longer someone has to wait:
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”] [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]This makes perfect sense – the more time users spend waiting, the more likely they are to leave. This is also visualized in the following graph from KISS Metrics: [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
This is especially true on mobile networks, where load times are longer due to lower quality network connection. It’s hard to put a dollar value on this relationship, but Amazon tried back in 2007. With A/B testing, they found that every 100 millisecond delay resulted in losing 1% of sales. Another study in 2013 found that splitting load times in half from 15 to 7 seconds, and then again from 7 to 4, and so on, improved conversions, but had diminishing returns.
And finally, yet another survey from Gomez.com and Akamai.com found that a 1 second delay in load time would lead to a 7% drop in productivity. Obviously, the dollar value of these statistics is going to be different for everyone, but if you think about other techniques to optimize websites where a gain of even half a percent is a huge success, it starts to put the importance of speed into perspective.
Hotlinking is when you display an image on your website by linking to the same image that’s on another site. It’s a technique that lets you have big, beautiful images on your site, but avoids storing them on your server space. The thing is, whenever a web browser wants to load your web page, it has to go to an external source to get the image. That means more DNS lookups, which is slow. It also means you’re consuming bandwidth from someone else’s site, and the owner of the image can swap it out for something else at their own discretion.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]And it happens all the time. It would be pretty embarrassing to have something like this show up on your homepage: Hosting your own images is an easy way to cut out external links. Other sources of multiple DNS look ups include:
Social share buttons
Embedded YouTube videos or Twitter feeds
Google Web Fonts
Less look ups mean a faster site, so stop hotlinking! [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
Google Developers very kindly has a whole section full of ideas for how you can speed up your website. One was is to install PageSpeed modules. PageSpeed modules are a series of modules that you can install for either Apache or Nginx that do a huge number of tiny tweaks to make each page on your site run faster. Each PageSpeed tweak is run as a filter, and you can turn these on and off as you see fit.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]PageSpeed filters help your site by:
Optimizing caching (e.g. outline CSS and JavaScript)
Minimizing round trips (e.g. CSS/JavaScript combining and flattening)
Prioritizing visual content (e.g. load above the fold stuff first)
Optimizing browser rendering (e.g. convert JPEG to progressive image loading)
PageSpeed modules provide a lot of technical speed boosts to your site in a really easy-to-implement way. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
3. Reduce HTTP requests
80% of a web page’s load time is spent on HTTP requests. HTTP requests include web pages, pictures, and files – basically anything that’s stored on the server. Therefore, one of the best ways to reduce your load time is to cut out some HTTP requests. There are dozens of ways to do this, so we thought we’d cover some of the easiest.
A CDN is a collection of servers spread all over the world. They speed your site in two ways.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]First, a CDN brings files closer to your user. For example, if your user is in Singapore and your servers are in Michigan, there’s going to be a big delay. But if you use a CDN, then it’s going to be like having a server in Singapore. Much faster. Second, CDNs shrink file sizes, so they load quicker. There are lots to join, but some of the most popular include CloudFlare, MaxCDN, Akamai (if you’re an enterprise company). [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
HTTP requests generally work like this. The web browser requests some information, and then the server sends it. That’s one HTTP request. But what if you want 10 things? Normally the web browser would request individually 10 things as 10 unique HTTP requests. It’d be like making a list for the grocery store and going taking 10 individual trips, one for each item. Very inefficient. A keep-alive header lets you keep the connection between the server and the web browser open, so you can send files over all at once, speeding things along.
Browser caching is when you save static components to a browser for future use by marking how often they need to be updated. Imagine, for example, a company blog page. You can’t cache the content, since you change the words every day or week or whatever.
However, let’s say that you have a logo on the same page. You can cache the logo, since you only update it every couple of years. So you mark the logo, telling the browser that it only needs to check for updates maybe once a year. That way, when a user is loading your blog page, their browser already has the logo read to go, and can concentrate on loading other stuff like words and images.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]There are caching tools out there to help you, but a lot of it is going to come down to you maintaining your site manually. The good thing is that you’ll find a lot of stuff doesn’t change that often, so once you mark it, you can pretty much leave it. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”] [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
5. Optimize your images
Humans are visual animals. So it’s no wonder that pictures have become a huge part of designing a website. Sadly, we often forget that the mobile networks have to download our big, beautiful hero images, which can spell disaster for load times. Fortunately, there are many ways you can streamline your pictures. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
Size your images: when you upload an image (say, for a blog) the image is going to load to the largest possible size, and then resize to whatever it’s supposed to be. So if you upload a 1024×768 picture for an image that’s going to be resized to 300×200, it’s going to load all 1024×768 pixels of information before it resizes it. Upload the image you need.
Compress your images: most of your users won’t be able to tell the difference between a 100% image and a 70% image. But they will be able to tell the difference in load time. You can use the free tool compressor.io to easily compress your images without losing quality.
Progressive rendering: we’rebig fans. Give your users something to look at while they wait.
We know, we know – users shouldn’t have to click more than three times (allegedly). But if you bring everything as close as possible to the user, you’re probably looking at fewer, larger web pages. And larger pages are slower. You want to think carefully about the trade-off of one more click and smaller pages. Something else to think about is the user experience of having giant, scrolling web pages that go on and on.
Shorter pieces that are more to the point might drive your site a little better than one mammoth pile of information. If your pages are exceptionally long, we suggest you revisit your information architecture and see where you can group content together. Remember: the ideal page size is about 30KB.
Animations (including GIFs) can be used to explain something in a way pictures and words can’t, and background videos are fantastic for telling a story and engaging your users. We think both are great. But they’re expensive in terms of load time.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Use them sparingly to save your site from getting bogged down. Also, make sure they have a natural stopping point. For your background video, have it stop so it’s just an image after 1-2 loops. Better yet, you can have your video play on desktop but appear as a still image on mobile. For your GIFs and animations, a few loops should be plenty to get your point across. These are big ticket items for load time, so spend carefully. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
8. Minimize your font selection
Every time you use a custom font – or even one of Google’s – it’s going to increase your load time. System fonts are fastest, but obviously these aren’t right for everyone. If you do opt for a custom font or a web font, try and reduce the variety of fonts and weights that you use.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Also, pick one library and stick with it. For example, if you do decide to go for Google Fonts, then stick with that. Sure, it’s going to increase your load time vs a system font, since the web browser has to complete more DNS look-ups. But for each new font you add from Google Fonts, the speed difference is negligible. However, if you decide to combine fonts from two sources – for example, Google and Typekit –then that’s now more DNS look-ups the web browser has to make. The result is a slower load time. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px|||||”]
9. Simplify, simplify, simplify
Don’t get caught in the ‘look at all the cool stuff I can do’ trap. No one cares that your layout is the most creative ground-breaking use of CSS ever. Does it help the user? If not, then cut it. You need to be ruthless when you’re evaluating your website. Every animation, embedded video, social share, picture, and advertisement need to be critically examined for how it helps the user.
Look at Quick Sprout’s blog for a fantastic example. It’s simple. It’s basic. There are some images, there are some links, and there are some screenshots. But every single element is obviously there to help the user. Their austerity gets results– the Quick Sprout blog loads crazy-fast.
Plugins are so easy to implement that we tend to forget that they’re really quite heavy. Technically, it’s because the plugins have to make multiple calls to various servers, and that takes a while. It’s like if you had to go to the supermarket for 10 things, but could only take one thing at a time. So while they’re good to have, think carefully about each and every one.
Most personalization – featuring products that someone’s looked at before, recommended products, a customized home page etc. – requires a database lookup, which is going to take some time. It’s a small change, but again, over time these changes add up, so think carefully before you add that detail to your page.
Before you start battering down the doors, we are big fans of responsive design. It’s a great way to get a killer mobile experience while maintaining only one body of content. However, there is a flipside: namely, that there’s lots of extra code and technical weight that drags down load speed.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”] Responsive sites are almost always slower than their mobile counterparts, which again is going to be a problem for e-commerce companies. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
13. Fix your internal pages
As David Hsieh recently pointed out in a webinar, social media and other referrals mean that it’s not all about home page optimization anymore. Increasingly, users are bypassing homepages and ending up deep in a site, landing on blog pages or product pages. So optimization needs to extend all the way through the site, rather than be a front-loaded all-out effort on your home page or landing page
Ultimately, there’s no absolute figure for how fast you should be. Google says we should all be aiming for a one-second page load, which would put your site in the top 10% of sites on the web. B But speed can also be seen as relative. That is, it doesn’t matter how fast you are so long as you’re fast enough for your user. For example, a blog about different types of duck feather duvets, or something else equally niche, might tolerate a slower load time due to more qualified users seeking them out. Likewise, a site relying heavily on keyword-driven PPC instead of long tail SEO would likely need a faster load time for its less qualified users. What we do know is that over half of all users require a site to load in two seconds or fewer or they’ll leave, and both Walmart and Amazon have reported that faster load times have had a direct impact on their conversion rates. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_post_slider posts_number=”5″ include_categories=”2″ bg_overlay_color=”#0C71C3″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_post_slider][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_social_media_follow _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” text_orientation=”center”][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”facebook” url=”https://www.facebook.com/Gotmenownrp” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#3b5998″ follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]facebook[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”twitter” url=”https://twitter.com/Gotmenow3″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#00aced” follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]twitter[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”linkedin” url=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/gotmenow-soft-solutions/” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#007bb6″ follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]linkedin[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”instagram” url=”https://www.instagram.com/gotmenow_soft_solutions/” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#ea2c59″ follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]instagram[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][/et_pb_social_media_follow][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]
Using WebP image format can reduce the image file size to more than 50% comparing with other image file type. For websites that using many images,using WebP image format will certainly boost the websites speed performance.
I also do some experiment to convert JPG and PNG images to WebP format. This JPG and PNG images I took by saving images fromMedia Player Classic(K-lite bundle), I don’t know anything about image compression or image format. To convert images to WebP, I am usingffmpegcommand line for Windows, and the result is:
PNG and JPG to WebP conversion reduce more than 60% in file size
Another experiment, I’ve done with this website NetworkReverse.com by changing all the posts images to WebP format. Fortunately, all images from this website posts are hosted in Google (bp.blogspot, ggpht,lh?.googleusercontent) and can be converted to WebP image format just by modifying the image url address. The result?
In this experiment I am usingGoogle PageSpeed Insight both Mobile and Desktopand the famousGTmetrixto test the website performance before and after conversion. The most significant thing I really impressed is the boost improvement in loading time (GTmetrix), it is almost a half from before conversion to WebP. Another thing is the Total page size, it is decrease more than 300KB, 25% smaller than before.
Unfortunately for now, WebP image format is not supported by all browsers yet. But most modern and widely used browsers already support WebP format. I’ve read some articles explaining about using a fallback image for browsers that doesn’t support WebP format. That will be my next experiment . Check thisBlogspot Image to WebP Lazy Loading Converter.
Anyway, if you are using blogspot and have your images hosted on bp.blogspot.com, you can try the trick from this video below to convert your images to WebP format by modifying url address andimprove your blogspot website speed performance.
Are you experiencing high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and other undesirable website metrics? While there are a multitude of different reasons as to why your site isn’t performing, one of the most overlooked reasons is site and page load speed.
First, let’s get the terminology down.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Site speed is how long it takes for your webpage to load from website hosting servers to the web browser that’s requesting the page. Page speed is slightly different, as it’s how long it takes for a page on your site to load after a link directing to it is clicked.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]While load speed is increases bounce rates and creates a poor user experience, it also affects your appearance in search. Google’s John Mueller even says it’s one of the most important factors in search visibility for the upcoming year in SearchEngineJournal’s recent podcast interview.
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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]You can find these metrics on your Google Analytics dashboard, or using a site speed tool.
In Google Analytics, go to “Behavior” on the left menu and click “Site Speed.”
To see site speed: Choose the first option “Overview.” From this page, you can see the average page load time, average server connection time, and other metrics on a broad scale. You can break this view down by browser, country, and page. Keep in mind, this report just shows averages, but what’s cool about this is you can view different time periods. By doing that, you can infer what changes caused slowdowns in the site.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]To see page speed: Choose the second option under “Site Speed” on the left menu – ”Page Timings.”
In this view, you are able to see how each individual page loads. This report shows how the speed compares to your site’s average load speed, and you can even break it down by load time in seconds, bounce rate, page views, and more.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https://blog.gotmenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Speed-up-your-PC.jpg” alt=”improve site speed” title_text=”improve site speed” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]To see an overall report on all of your site’s pages, Google Search Console recently updated their dashboard to include a Speed Report. This is currently an experimental tool on the dashboard, but it will showcase which specific pages have errors and are loading slow, moderate, or fast.
As for site speed tools, Google has PageSpeed Insights, which gives a very vivid diagnosis on how long it takes for the first contentful paint to load, the first meaningful paint, and other speed data. It provides screenshots from the initial load and also provides very actionable opportunities based on the insights from the test.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]WebPageTest is another tool for a quick overview of your site’s speed. This tool allows you to pick a device and a location to test from, and will provide a report that presents the site’s total load time, the load time for first contentful paint, speed index, and additional nichey data.
Now you’re probably wondering what a good speed to have is… however, every site is different. Obviously a simple single page site is going to load a lot quicker than a robust site full of animations, scrollytelling effects, and high quality retina visuals. It also depends on the server fetching the data, and other factors that you can’t actually see as a user. So if we’re talking about a good user experience, all excuses aside, anything longer than 3 seconds is too long – Google said so. And that’s still about 2.5 seconds too long, as Google also says users only want to wait about the length of a literal blink of the eye… 400 milliseconds. That’s asking a lot, though.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]So, how do you get to a load speed that’s under 3 seconds? As you probably understand by now, a lot of factors go into this number. For site load speed, there’s not really an easy fix. To do this properly, you’re going to want to have your developer look into a few things…
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Remove old and unused code, themes, databases, apps and anything else that’s cluttering the backend of the site;
Optimize site wide assets, like your logo, items that appear in the footer, badges, etc.;
Reduce the amount of http/s requests, as the more files there are, the more requests are run and the longer the load takes;
Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files, because like I said, the less code the better.
Page speed is a little more fun (well… fun for me). You’re going to have to do some digging to figure out what needs to be optimized. Start by going to that “Page Timings” report in Google Analytics. Ask yourself these questions:
What pages are the slowest? How slow?
What pages have the highest bounce rates? And the lowest bounce rates?
If bounce rates are high (at Electric Enijn, we like to see bounce rates under 40%), but the time spent on the page is also high – what’s keeping users on the page? Could that be slowing down the page?
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]Gather all of these insights all in one place and start looking at the pages on your site. Sometimes the answer is obvious, like the page has a lot of images, videos, and different fonts. But maybe the page looks the same as others, and it’s still a lot slower. This is when you’ll have to look a bit further into what makes up the page. If there are old scripts, font families, or anything else being pulled onto the page but not actually being used, take them out. We recommend using Google Fonts, which are also optimized for page speed. The same goes for plug-ins, tracking pixels, and any type of widget, similar to what you would want to look for sitewide to improve site speed.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]As for images and videos on the page, try and shrink their size. One tool we often use for compressing PNGs and JPEGs is Tinypng. If they can’t be optimized any further, you might have to try lazy loading them in. This isn’t the best practice for SEO, but hey, site speed is SEO, too!
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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]After optimizing your site to improve load speed, keep testing it and see if your metrics improve. If it doesn’t seem to be loading faster, it might be a deeper issue if your CMS or hosting platform. A lot of WordPress sites, for example, are weighed down by excess themes, scripts, and plug-ins, but the deeper site speed issue tends to be the hosting platform. While the promise of “unlimited” bandwidth, email accounts, and cloud space are appealing, what you should really be looking for from your site host is a high uptime, no less than 99%. Many self hosting CMS’ can offer unbeatable uptime, like Shopify promises 99.98%. We’re big fans of wpengine, which will monitor for bad plugins and ensure your website stays compliant.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]I recommend you check your website’s site speed by digging into your Google Analytics or using one of the speed tests to see how your website is performing. While 3 seconds is ideal, your site is probably hovering around 15 seconds – and this wait time increases a user’s probability of bouncing by over 123%. While it’s important to get this metric down, it’s more important that you do it properly by keeping both your site’s structure and user experience in mind.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_post_slider posts_number=”8″ include_categories=”2″ bg_overlay_color=”#0C71C3″ arrows_custom_color=”#0C71C3″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_post_slider][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_social_media_follow _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” text_orientation=”center”][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”facebook” url=”https://www.facebook.com/Gotmenownrp” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#3b5998″ follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]facebook[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”twitter” url=”https://twitter.com/Gotmenow3″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#00aced” follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]twitter[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”linkedin” url=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/gotmenow-soft-solutions/” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#007bb6″ follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]linkedin[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=”instagram” url=”https://www.instagram.com/gotmenow_soft_solutions/” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#ea2c59″ follow_button=”off” url_new_window=”on”]instagram[/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][/et_pb_social_media_follow][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]
Is the Website Loading speed really that important?
You must remember the beginning of the Internet, the connection through modems and slow websites. Luckily, that time is behind us and the websites are getting faster and faster. Website loading speed is very important for the user experience. Therefore, the page loading speed has become an official ranking factor from a search engine perspective. The upper page load limit is up to 2 seconds, and the ideal one is about 0.5-1 seconds. In this post we’ll write some tips onhow to improve website loading speed.
Tips on How to Improve Website Loading Speed
There are a bunch of online services where you can check the speed of your site for free. Even Google offers free online servicePageSpeed Insights. All you need to do is to enter the site’s url which you want to analyze, and wait for a few seconds:
Full-resolution images can take a long time to load. Images that have not been compressed causes slow loading, especially on mobile devices. No image should be over 100kb and you should never upload images directly without optimization and resizing.
Luckily, there is no need for high level of development skills for this, and you can easily reduce the size of your images, without any quality degradation through a number of free tools and plugins, if you have WordPress website. Images can be edited and loosely compressed using Photoshop/Illustrator and with many other free online tools.
Also, there are many tools and plugins for WordPress users that will automatically compress your images as you are uploading it to the website, likeWP Smush.
2. Remove Render-blocking CSS and JavaScript files
CSS & JavaScript files are very important for your website, because they control how your site will look and function. Render-blocking CSS and JavaScript files prevent your page from fully loading until they are processed.
You should avoid and minimize the use of blocking JavaScript and CSS files. If you have a lot of small CSS files, try to put them into one CSS file if possible. To remove Render-blocking Js you can make JS Asynchronous or preform Defer Loading of JS.
A CDN can speed up your site by serving static files such as images, CSS, Javascript and other static files. A CDN will store your website’s static files (CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, etc.) into a non-centralized file system around the world, and when user from another country visits your website, CDN will serve the files from the closest server to user’s location.
4. Enable the Website Compression
Website Compression can reduce the size of text-based files that the browser has to download and you’ll be surprised with results after enabling the compression.
The most popular compression tool for HTML, CSS and JavaScript text-based elements isGZIP. The configuration depends on your server. For Apache web server you’ll need to put some configuration rules into .htaccess file. For WordPress users there are always suitable plugin, checkWP Super Cache.
5. Cache Your Website
Server Rendering time can really slow your website, but when your site is cached properly it can reduce your website’s loading time. Caching makes websites extremely fast, which leads to better SEO scores. Browser caching allows pages to load quicker as users navigate through the website by telling the browser how long to keep files stored. There are two very popular plugins for WordPress users: W3 Total Cache & WP Super Cache.
6. Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Minifying HTML, CSS and JavaScript involves removing redundant text from a file, such as unnecessary text, data, white spaces, comments, characters, etc. t is recommended to perform minification just before releasing into production, as developers wont be able to read/edit them easily.
Removing redundant formatting, code comments and unused code will enable very fast loading time. There are plenty of free tools you can use to minify your files manually or automatically:Minify for CSS & JavaScript minification,JSCompressfor JavaScript minificaton, etc. As always there is W3 Total Cache for WordPress users, but this part can be a little advanced for beginners.
Who doesn’t scroll through Facebook at least once a day. In a 5-minute scroll, we come across dozens of posts and six of the ten posts have an effect on us. So It is basically a “strong marketing tool” that, when used properly, will propel our business to the next level. As a whole, it is a land of potential that, when properly used, yields fantastic outcomes.
According to recent trends, about 64% of people choose to connect with businesses that have a Facebook profile. So here are 5 tried-and-true methods for marketing a construction company.
First and foremost, make sure to build a thorough profile by including all pertinent details about your business. Begin with a brief overview of your company, followed by your contact details, such as your location, phone number, and email address. Also, don’t forget to have a link to your website.
2. Locating The Target Audience:
You will begin developing your following once your Facebook page is set up. Invite your existing customers to like your page by sending them emails or connecting directly via Facebook before approaching your dream clients. Also, keep an eye on other companies that may need your services in the future. As a result, you’ll be able to build an audience.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https://blog.gotmenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/facebook-mobile-login-on-iphone-without-app.jpg” alt=”can facebook help promote your construction company” title_text=”can facebook help promote your construction company” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]
3. Generate Quality Content:
Now that your business page and audience are up and running, it’s time to start delivering some high-quality material. Creating useful and high-quality material for your Facebook page is an essential part of the marketing process. Already doing great in your business? ok then you can share your growth in the form of posts in your page. Let a display of your achievements and accolades, share testimonials of happy customers .
Consider running a Facebook commercial in addition to bolstering the business page. You don’t have to splurge to do this. You can run advertisements on Facebook for as little as 75 rupees. One of the best aspects of Facebook ads is the precision with which you can aim your prospects. As a result, you can guarantee that your message reaches only those who are most likely to reply and act.
Nothing works on everyone. That is why it is essential to evaluate various forms of content and identify the tactics performed well, as well as the types of content that your followers prefer. Now applying that expertise the next time you build an ad campaign will boost the brand’s visibility and even generate eligible leads.
Despite being busy and chaotic, Facebook can also be an effective tool for builders to advertise their businesses. What you have to do now is get smart on how you use this data source.
Messenger communication is ‘the’ phenomenon and getting popular than ever. Facebook has 1.65 billion active users. Twitter has 310 million active users. LinkedIn boasts 100 million active users.Most probably you have your business marketed in most of them if not all.
Another platform with the most number of users would be WhatsApp. With 1.5 billion active users, spreading over 180 countries, it may be time for you to consider marketing on WhatsApp.
To add on to a marketer’s delight, according to 99firm the average user checks WhatsApp more than 23 times per day and 58% of users access WhatsApp several times a day.
Why Turn to WhatsApp for Business?
The attention that marketing on WhatsApp receives as on date might not be as much but there numerous reasons for you to be getting started with it as a marketer. Some of the obvious reasons include:
It is free!
Let’s you send images, e-books, your brochures and catalogs, videos, audios, links, location, documents
It can serve as a survey tool for feedbacks directly from customers
It can be used for group meetings
Let’s you send alerts on new events, sales and offers
Messages won’t get lost as offline message alerts ensure users know when a message is waiting
Let’s you communicate with customers directly and in real-time
How to Start WhatsApp Marketing: A Step-wise Guide
Step #1
Is the name you are going to use permanent? Think about the name you pick. You should be sure as you cannot change it soon as once you enter your name, you cannot change it.
Your WhatsApp account is bound to a singular phone number. You need to make sure that the number you use to install the app stays around with your business.
What should be your profile picture? This fact cannot be emphasized more—your display picture should be your brand’s image. Ideally your logo.
Do people check-out your profile? In that case what should be the status? Though people rarely go through a status you should have something brand-related, perhaps your motto, as your status.
What about the URL, where can you fit that? If you must include it then the status is your best choice. Though the link will be unclickable but you have 139 characters at your disposal.
Lastly, remember that your status, after all, isn’t the best place to drive traffic instead you want your messages to do that
Step #2
One way could be—share your number and let them add you. This method seems to work because you are not being intrusive by asking visitors for their phone number and at the same time you appear to be trusting your number to the masses and giving them with the choice to add you.
The other way would be—getting their number and you adding them. Obviously, you cannot just go on and ask for the users’ number directly, making it harder than the first one. While the previous method places a lot of responsibility on the user, this method helps you eliminate an acquisition step. Apart from the standard ways of acquiring contact numbers (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.) there also exist another unique way to do so. Target users with a pop-up without having to have any coding expertise, as there are available multiple tools for you to use.
Step #3
You know that you are limited to 256 people a group. Therefore you need to decide who will be in that group. Would you segment it by age? Gender? It’s up to you.
What will the dynamics of each group be? As you keep adding people to a group you must also think about the demographics and psychographics of each group.
Will you have to move people between different groups? When clubbing users under different dynamics you might have to move people from group-to-group or move them to a new group altogether. But consider how your audience might feel if they’re moved from group to group.
Step #4
Businesses, before deciding on a concept, need to ask the following questions:
Who am I creating this WhatsApp content for and what do I want to achieve with it.
How can I create value for customers—what content needs to be communicated using messaging apps, making it relevant for the target groups?
What kind of content is particularly suited for WhatsApp? What information needs to be received immediately, what kind of content is vial and shareable?
Since WhatsApp doesn’t sell ad space or have any business-specific features (yet) you have to be innovative in your marketing approach.
While WhatsApp is different in its reach and features than other messenger apps, it’s important to develop your WhatsApp strategy alongside your general messaging app marketing strategy.
There are a few limitations you need to address when developing your WhatsApp marketing strategy. First of all, there is no such thing as a business account, so if your brand is creating an account it faces the same limitations as any other user.
Since each WhatsApp account is tied directly to a single mobile phone number—and you can only message with up to 256 WhatsApp users at once—it isn’t a good choice for large-scale, one-to-many marketing. So your chances of success are higher when you use its limitations to your advantage.
Remember that, like other mobile messaging services, part of the power of WhatsApp is that it’s tied to our phones, which tend to seem more personal to us than our computers—they’re not shared and we carry them everywhere. So any marketing campaigns you tackle should reflect (and respect) the personal aspect. This is where consumers interact with their friends, so trust and creativity is key.
Not surprisingly, some of the best examples of effective WhatsApp campaigns hail from regions with the highest penetration, including South America. Here are some case studies of brands who have made an impact using WhatsApp for marketing.
Create a brand personal to chat with users and build buzz
When Absolut Vodka launched their Limited Edition Absolut Unique bottle collection in Argentina WhatsApp was a natural place to try and build buzz, since 84 percent of the country’s mobile phone users were on the app at the time.
For the launch they decided to host a very exclusive party. The catch? There were only two invitations available to the public. Anyone wanting to win these tickets had to use WhatsApp to contact an imaginary bouncer named Sven and convince him to let them go.
The campaign generated over 1,000 unique images, videos, and audio messages people created to convince Sven, and built buzz in the community.
WhatsApp has launched a Business App they say was “built with the small business owner in mind.” The app is free to download, and currently only available for Android devices. It allows businesses to easily interact with customers by using tools to automate, sort, and quickly respond to messages.
For example, you can save and reuse messages you frequently send, and use these “quick replies” to answer common questions more effectively. You can also set an away message when you’re unable to immediately answer so your customers know when to expect a response. A greeting message can also be set up that welcomes customers to your business
Since WhatsApp doesn’t offer any business tools or an API yet, small-scale targeted campaigns like the examples above are the best strategy. To start engaging with people, you need to have them add your number to their phone’s contact list. WhatsApp does provide a way to add a click-to-chat link to your website, email signature, or social media pages that makes it easy for people to start a conversation with your brand.
Keep in mind that the expectation in messaging is for near-instant replies, so make sure you have the resources to manage the chats, or—like Agent Provocateur did—limit availability to specific windows of time.
There are third-party WhatsApp marketing tools and services offering to set up multiple WhatsApp accounts and groups for marketers, but using them can lead to you being blocked temporarily or banned entirely from the service. Plus, mass messaging in this type of environment can do a lot of damage to your brand.
While WhatsApp isn’t as feature-rich as Facebook Messenger for marketing, it is moving in that direction. Marketers who create campaigns that work with—not against—WhatsApp’s unique characteristics will have an advantage. The lack of advertising and corporate presence on WhatsApp means that early adopters can really stand out—if you do it right.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”]The page loading speed of your website is one of the most important factors in your business’s success. A slow website can cost you a loss in web traffic, poor website rankings, low conversion rate, dramatic loss in online visibility on search engines and have an overall negative impact on the business’s success. On the contrary, a fast loading website can engage your customers in your website and improve your website rankings, traffic and sales. There are certain elements that affect your website performance which are not in your control on the WIX platform such as CDN’s, https requests, server response time and scripts embedded by default into the CMS back-end systems but there is still plenty that you can do on your WIX website to improve its overall speed performance and make it perform super fast like any other high speed website (using any other platform such as wordpress, weebly, squarespace or hosted on an independent hosting provider) on the internet. In this article we are going to address some of the most common mistakes and how you can avoid them and improve your website speed.
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There are several websites that allow you to run a free test and check your website speed in real-time – some examples are below:
16 Top Tips to Increase Page Speed of Your WIX Website:
Homepage should be simple and clean:
The homepage is the gateway to your website and it should be simple and clean. Avoid using too many images, animations and videos on your homepage; do not make it overly long and deliver a precise message about your products and services through text on the homepage. A clear message delivered through meticulous catchy text can engage your customers in your website homepage and force them to stick to your website to explore it further.
When people enter your website, the first section that loads is the top part of your website. A website generally loads from top to bottom therefore placing easy to load content on the top part of the page is good practise. You can place images, videos, animations or any apps in the bottom part of the page (although it is advisable not to use too many videos, images or apps on your website or on individual pages). The point is that the top part loads quickly and engages your customers while the rest of the page (bottom part) loads. We would recommend to display the most important information related to the page that customers need to know on the top part of the page, which can engage your customers while the bottom part loads.
Do not overload your webpages with images, animations & videos:
Videos, large size images and animations take extra time to load due to their heavy bandwidth, and can slow down your website speed and cause speed performance issues. When using videos, images or animations make sure you use them in moderation and carry out real-time testing while developing your website pages to see what impact they have on your page speed. While using and embedding external videos from YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook into your website, be aware of the impact of loading time of these videos on your website. Although videos and animations look attractive to use, you should think about their impact on your website speed before using them.
One of the major benefits of using WIX CMS is that it allows you to edit your mobile site and make changes to the mobile version separately. The mobile editor can dramatically improve your mobile site speed. You can hide large size images, videos, animations, photo galleries, iFrames or any other large size elements in the mobile editor separately, without hiding them in the desktop version on a WIX site. Therefore the WIX mobile version allows you to hide elements while keeping the same elements visible in the desktop version. Also, try to make your mobile site clean, simple and not to make individual pages overly lengthy. Deliver a concise message to engage your audience on your mobile site.
You can use free compression tools to compress your website images for better performance before uploading them on your WIX website. WIX states that it automatically compresses your images to WebP image format. WebP is a new image compression format by Google. WIX has clearly stated that it prefers JPEG files for images over PNG files because JPEG images load faster than PNG while retaining the same level of quality, and JPEG images are more web optimised as well. There are several free tools available online to convert PNG images to JPEG file format.
It is always advisable to use popular web fonts on your website such as Helvetica, Times, Arial, Futura because they are already cached in most web browsers, and having a popular font on your website means you are automatically improving your website speed to a certain extent.
Everybody knows text loads faster than images, animations & video, therefore using text over images and other media is always advisable to improve the speed of your website. You can easily deliver your message through text and engage your audience while the rest of your website loads. As we all know, Google and other search engines love informative text as it helps SEO and establishes website relevance to user queries. So using text in a professional manner over images can not only increase your website speed but also help to improve your rankings on Google and other search engines.
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Stick to one or two font styles:
It is good practise to stick to one or two font styles at most for your entire website because using a large number of font styles or custom fonts can affect your website speed as they take longer to load. Also, using different fonts means that you are showing inconsistency on your website and it doesn’t look very professional to use different custom fonts.
Apps and plug-ins are generally made of scripts and CSS and require more bandwidth to load. In simple words, you can think of an app as a small website, so if you use an app on your website that means you are putting another small website within your website and it can impact your website speed. We only advise you to use apps when there is no other alternative and it becomes necessary to use an app on your business website. If you are using apps only to make your website look good, then we would advise to use an alternative that doesn’t impact your website speed.
Slideshows and galleries apps are very large in size and when you put further images into them, they require more bandwidth to download. Though Slideshows and galleries look very attractive, they do impact your website speed performance on the WIX platform, so consider the page speed aspect when you use them on your website.
iFrames can dramatically slow down your website speed e.g. if you use 2 iFrames on one page, it means that single page (where you added 2 iFrames) will take as long as 3 pages take to load, therefore using multiple iFrames on your webpages can dramatically reduce your website speed.
You can enable your local browser caching to improve your website loading time. Obviously, this is a local client side function and doesn’t improve website speed on the server side. It only helps to improve the client side website speed.
The header is the section that is present on almost every webpage of your website and contributes to the website loading time. The header should be clean, simple and short. Only use the logo, tagline and text based minimum menu elements in the header section. Avoid putting items, images, social media links, button or animations into your header section. If you make your website header too large and heavy, it will take longer to load and put a negative impact on each individual page and overall website speed. A complex header confuses customers whereas simple and clean headers can engage your customers when they find information easily on your website through header navigational links.
Re-directs can have a negative impact on your website speed because each time a page re-directs to another page, some time is wasted in the HTTPS request. Although re-directs are required when a page is deleted or moved, having too many re-directs can create additional HTTPS requests and causes pages to load with delay. Also, fix your entire website broken links because they unnecessarily use bandwidth.
If you are using any external scripts on your WIX website, make sure you test them first for the amount of impact they can put on your website speed. Using too many unnecessary scripts can have negative impacts on your website speed.
This is a new feature created by WIX to cache your webpages. It is a very good feature mainly for static pages. Webpage caching on WIX helps to speed up page loading time significantly compared to pages that are not cached. Although WIX has enabled automatic caching for most pages, if you wish you can check and set your own caching parameters via the advanced settings of each page in your WIX control panel.
Website speed is very important because if you have a website that takes longer to load, customers will not stay on your website and jump to another website which forces Google algorithms to consider that your website is creating a bad experience for your customers and is not a good online resource. This process can increase your website bounce rate and may drop your website rankings on Google and other search engines.
To sum up, WIX is a very good platform and your website can run super fast if you can avoid common mistakes that generally affect the page speed. In fact, your website can run slow on any other platform such as wordpress, weebly, squarespace or another independent hosting provider if you use excessive images with animations, different fonts and videos and do not address those factors that affect website speed. If you think and learn about website speed factors before designing your new website, you can certainly make a big difference to your website speed performance.
