7 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your Website

Removing precious time just to speed up your website may seem like a grueling and redundant task. But did you know that accomplishing this seemingly trivial feat can not only measurably impact user experience, but also improve SEO, enhance visibility, and increase conversion rates. According to a 2006 report by Amazon, for every 100 millisecond increase in their website speed, there was a 1% increase in revenue. Additionally, an independent study by Google and Deloitte showed that:

• improving page load speed by the same amount can boost conversion rate by 8%
• faster sites have up to a 70% longer session duration
• faster sites have 35% lower bounce rates
• faster sites earn almost double the revenue of slower sites

Now let’s look at the negative impact of a slow website on sales. Research conducted by the Aberdeen Group found that a one-second delay in page load time yielded:

• 11% fewer page views
• a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and
• a 7% loss in conversions

These metrics are proof enough to convince anyone of the essentiality of faster websites. It helps you rank higher on Google and keeps your bottom-line profits soaring.

Let’s define in more detail how your website speed influences:

• Visibility - it’s no secret that Google takes load times into account when ranking websites. However, after mobile searches started outnumbering desktop searches, it rolled out its new mobile-first index. This index ranks search results based on the user experience of mobile users. So, it’s not just sufficient to reduce your website’s loading time. In order to maintain your site ranking and visibility, you should improve website speed for any and all browsers and screen sizes.
• Conversion - As listed above, slower page load times are guilty for significantly dropping conversion rates. The opposite effect takes place when load time is improved by a mere 0.1 second. If you want your visitors to convert into customers, whether that is by buying your product, subscribing to your newsletter, or registering for a webinar, you’ll need to focus on speed.
• Usability - Slower websites can directly impact customer loyalty, especially when the site is unresponsive to user requests. Conversely, better website performance leads to higher customer satisfaction. This also contributes towards overall user experience, which is the building block for an expanding customer base.
• SEO - Search engines have allocated crawl budgets. If your website happens to be slow, Google is only able to crawl a few pages. This could render your SEO efforts useless and negatively impact your indexation.

There are a number of steps mobile app development companies and mobile app developers in Kuwait can take to improve their website speed.

1. Measure your page speed
   

   First things first, you’ll want to assess how your website is currently performing. In fact, you’ll want to test your website on a regular basis so that you can identify specific areas of good and bad performance, and keep improving. Also, sometimes one technique of speed optimization can have a negative impact on another feature of the site, so it’s best to keep analyzing your website speed after each change. You can start with the beginner friendly Google PageSpeed Insights which will allow you to measure your website’s speed on both desktops and mobile devices.

   Google says it’s ideal to have a three second load time. However, most sites don’t meet that benchmark. In a way, that’s a good thing, because if you put in the work, you have a better chance of being ranked higher up on the user experience scale.

2. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

   A CDN is a set of web servers that provide content to end users across several geographical locations around the world. This is different from hosting on a single server, where all user requests get sent to the same device and consequently, processing and load times for these requests increase. With CDN, user requests are sent to the nearest server which allows for quicker content delivery and faster websites. The caveat: this can be quite expensive to pull off.

3. Enable compression

   Image files are larger in size than other files like HTML and CSS. As a result, they end up taking the longest to load and are responsible for a lot of internet traffic. Images can be optimized by reducing its resolution and dimensions, changing its file format, opting for lazy loading, and compressing the file through lossless compression, all of which can be done online for free.

4. Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript

   Does your code have unnecessary comments, whitespcaces, commas, semicolons, etc.? You can minify them so they take up less bandwidth and enable faster load times. For reducing the size of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files larger than 150 bytes, you can use a software application like Gzip.

5. Minimize HTTP requests

   An HTTP request is made up of elements like images, stylesheets, and scripts. When a user visits a website, the browser notifies the web server and requests for files that make up the content for that web page. The more of these on-page components you have, the longer it will take for the page to load. By minimizing your requests, you may be able to speed up your site.

6. Reduce plugins

   The function of plugins is to add specific features that are suggested by third parties. More the number of plugins, more the amount of resources used. This gives rise to a slower website and potential security issues. Some plugins like a font plugin or a plugin used to edit headers and footers can be easily eliminated and replaced by a simple code. Your website might even have multiple plugins with overlapping features, or ones you don’t really need. You can also choose to individually test plugins to determine which ones are slowing your site down the most.

7. Reduce redirects

   A redirect is used to forward visitors of one page to a different page. They can sometimes add a few seconds to page load time. Even though redirects are very useful in cases of page deletions and when you wish to eliminate broken link issues, they should be avoided if not necessary. Identify any redirect chains too, which are redirects pointing to other redirected pages, creating extra requests and slowing your page down. The Patrick Sexton Redirect mapper tool is great for identifying duplicate redirects while a tool like Screaming Frog can help highlight the purpose and the final destination of each redirect.

Even though all of these tips can help you achieve a faster website, you don’t really need to implement every single one of these. Working on issues that have the greatest effect on your page load time with the help of a mobile responsive website design company in Kuwait will benefit your website the most. Some of these tips may require help from a mobile app developer. Since Design Master, one of the leading web and app development companies in Kuwait, employs experienced mobile app developers and web designers in Kuwait, it can easily help you fix technical issues like slow-loading pages. Remember, even a one second improvement in load time makes all the difference for your website’s ranking. Contact us today to optimize your website for speed and improve its ranking.