Website load speed plays a vital role in determining your brand’s conversion rate and ultimate success. Your buyers are quite impatient, and it has to be quick when they land on your website. If your site is taking longer than usual to load, then they will simply leave your site and visit your competitor’s site to buy the products they were looking forward to.
I am sure you must have heard that every second count. It is true as well because a single second delay in site load speed will reduce the total page views by 11%, decrease the customer satisfaction by 16%, and a whopping 7% loss in the conversions.
Imagine, if a single second has this effect on the figures, how dramatically will it affect your business if the delay increases more than 1 second.
Moreover, site speed is also considered as one of the primary ranking factors on the SERPs.
This article talks about the efficient ways to increase your site’s speed for ranking high on the SERPs and maintaining the baseline profits high.
Related: How To Check Google Rankings (Best Methods)
So, let’s begin.
Here are a few major ways in which you can enhance the speed of your site.
1- Minimize The HTTP Requests
As per research, around 80% of the time taken to load a page is primarily because of elements of the site like media files, scripts, and stylesheets. So, all the on-page elements of the site will directly impact the site load speed.
Suppose the weight of all such elements is more than the site will take more time than usual to load. Similarly, if the elements are well optimized and lightweight, the site will load quickly.
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In order to minimize the HTTP requests, you first have to identify how much does your site makes. If you are using Google Chrome, you can check the number of HTTP requests with the browser’s developer’s tools.
Once identified, you then have to minimize them to decrease the load on your site and enhance your site’s load speed.
2- Utilize Asynchronous Loading For JavaScript & CSS Files
After optimizing your media files, you can even optimize how they are going to load on your pages. CSS and JavaScripts are loaded in two different ways. The first one is synchronously, and the other one is asynchronous.
If your files load synchronously, then they will load one by one at a time, taking a lot of time to load the complete site. While if they load asynchronously, it will be loaded simultaneously, saving a lot of time and facilitating quick site load.
3- Combine & Minify Files
One of the most traditional yet impactful ways of minimizing your HTTP requests is combining and minifying your files. This will help in not only reducing the size of an individual file but also in reducing the total number of files.
Combining and minifying your files becomes extremely important and inevitable if you are using a templated website builder. Furthermore, minifying a file is all about the removal of unwanted elements like whitespaces, codes, and formatting. While combining files is a process of grouping files that runs multiple JavaScripts and CSS files.
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If your website is built on WordPress, you can seamlessly combine and minify those files using a plugin called WP Rocket.
4- Focus on Reducing The Server Response Time
As far as the factors affecting the site load speed are concerned, DNS is one of the biggest culprits. A Domain Name System (DNS) is the server with the database of IP addresses and their associated hostnames.
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When an individual types an URL in their respective browsers, a DNS server will then translate that URL into the IP address that shows its location online. Furthermore, a DNS lookup is a process of identifying the specific DNS report.
The total time taken in this process will determine how much time your site will take to load. The speed of your DNS provider will have the leading role in determining the rate of the process. If your DNS provider’s speed is low, your browser will take more time to load your site. Hence, focus on reducing the server response time by using a high-speed DNS provider.
5- Wisely Select The Hosting Options Aligning With Your Requirements
Often the new site owners prefer economic hosting options only. This is practically feasible as well. The need for upgrading your hosting plan comes into picture when your site starts getting more traffic.
While selecting the hosting for your site, you’ll have primarily three options available for you. These options include shared hosting, dedicated server, and VPS hosting.
Related: 10 Best Web Hosting For Beginners (Comparison)
Shared hosting is one of the smartest and cheapest hosting options available to you. It makes an excellent choice when you are just starting over and do not have heavy traffic coming. But, you might face some lags as your site starts getting more and more traffic, contributing towards the slower site load speed.
With VPS hosting, you share your servers with other websites, but you also get the dedicated portions of the overall server’s resources.
The ultimate one is the dedicated server. It does not get affected by high traffic as it does not share the server with any other site. If you have an ecommerce website then dedicated server hosting makes an excellent bet because it will help your site load comparatively faster then that of a shared or VPS hosting.
6- Enable The Auto-Compression
If the files on your site are smaller in size, your website will have a high site load speed. On the other side of a load of files on your site is more, the more time your site will take in order to load the site.
To compress the files on your site, you must take help of some software applications like Gzip. It works effectively with both CSS and JavaScripts. This can help in reducing the download time by around 70%.
Moreover, if your site is built at WordPress, plugins like WP Rocket & W3 Total Cache Plugin will help you quickly enable Gzip.
Related: How to Create A Website With WordPress
7- Reduce The Size of The Images
The power of reducing the image size to increase the site load speed is not a secret from anyone. It is considered as one of the most effective ways to boost the speed of your site. As per a survey, around 66% of consumers say that they would prefer seeing the pictures of the products first before any other details. Faster loading images will become even more critical if you have an ecommerce website.
Related: Best WordPress Plugins For Image Optimization
Conclusion
All the ways mentioned above works well when it comes to increasing the site load speed. If you want to convert the traffic on your site into loyal customers, it is highly recommended for you to check and improve your site’s speed continually.
It is essential because merely ranking high on the SERPs is not the only thing required to stand out. Even if you rank high on the search engine results, but your site speed is low, you will face significant opposing challenges such as higher bounce rates.
