How to Make a Website Load Faster

When someone views your website, how quickly does it load?

A slow-loading website might really harm your search engine position since Google values page speed as a ranking indicator.

Unless you're an expert in web construction, shortening the time it takes for your website to load could seem challenging.

But happily, there are practical approaches to speeding up page loads.

We'll provide you a detailed tutorial on how to speed up the loading of your website in this post.

We will also go through the factors that affect website performance, the importance of website speed, and the optimal time for a web page to load, all supported by data.

Important website load time data to demonstrate the importance of page speed

How often have you clicked on a link, waited what seemed like an eternity for it to load, just to dismiss the tab shortly thereafter?

You're not alone; website load time data consistently demonstrate that page speed and total page load time may result in losses.

Do you realize that:

1. If a website's page takes longer than three seconds to load, 40% of visitors will depart.
2. 2 seconds or less website load time is what 47% of consumers demand.
3. A website with a load time of more than five seconds will lose more than 70% of its visitors.
4. Only 30% of internet users are willing to wait for a website to load for 6 to 10 seconds before leaving.
5. The entire discussion pace might decrease by 7% as a result of a 1-second page response delay.
6. If a website's load speed was a problem, about 80% of customers would not return.
7. Over half of mobile users leave a page and move on after only 3 seconds.
8. In the previous year, 60% of mobile users reported running into issues while browsing various websites, which caused them to leave the page.
9. 12% to 44% of visitors, depending on the sources, will discuss their bad load-time experiences and advise others to steer clear of the specific website.
10. In 2018, the average load time for a mobile website was over 15 seconds, while the ideal load time for mobile landing pages is still around 3 seconds.
11. When the page loads in three seconds as opposed to one, bounce rates rise by more than 30%.
12. The likelihood that users will leave the page increases by 90% if the page load time goes from 1 to 5 seconds.
13. For a page to fully load, it typically takes 10 seconds on desktop and 27 seconds on mobile.
14. A landing page loads almost 90% slower on mobile devices than it does on desktops on average.
15. Compared to a smaller, fully optimized, lightweight website, large pages take around 315% longer to fully load (including all images).

Therefore, if you're trying to establish a brand or run an eCommerce business, a slow load speed can have serious consequences in addition to hurting your SEO and making it more difficult for people to find you.

Tips for accelerating your website

Not all hope is lost, though; there are a few simple tweaks you may make to increase your average page speed.

Step 1: Select the appropriate template

Let's face it, having a beautiful website template won't automatically bring in visitors. Additionally, it must be optimized for quick page loads.

Choosing a template that is generally lightweight is the best option here.

This simply refers to a template with fewer design elements overall, which means fewer things to load.

In essence:

• The coding structure of lightweight web design is effective. This entails removing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files from a template.
• The aesthetic and practical value of the website must be enhanced by each design element.
• Your website template must be both mobile responsive and SEO-friendly since Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites.

Step 2: Improve each of your images

The majority of websites actually contain visuals to support their information.

Additionally, some websites, such as online shops and portfolios, display hundreds of images at most.

So, while it's important to utilize high-quality graphics, packing your pages with huge files will drastically slow down the loading time of your website.

Because of this, optimizing your photos is crucial. So by optimizing, we mean reducing the file size of the image without sacrificing the image's quality.

Step 3: Maintain website security

Would you feel secure using a website if the URL bar didn't have that green padlock?

We wouldn't either.

You need to add security elements to your website to prevent cyberattacks if you don't want to run the danger of someone using harmful scripts to destroy all of your data.

The majority of contemporary browsers scan a page for SSL certificates and possibly harmful material before even beginning to load it.

You run the danger of the page not loading at all if your website doesn't meet industry standards. What a terrible user experience.

By encrypting the data sent between them, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypts communication between your users and server.

It confirms your website's identity, assuring visitors and search algorithms that you are operating a trustworthy, honest website.

• Every website needs an SSL, but it's especially important for those that request sensitive information from users, like online shops with checkout pages.
• The HTTPS protocol can be used on your website after installing an SSL. This activates the server-client connection encryption, which is seen in the address bar's little padlock.
• Nowadays, the majority of browsers mandate the use of SSL certificates as a crucial security measure for websites.
• Your website's browser verification procedure will be simpler if it has an SSL certificate, which will increase page speed overall.

Step 4: Use iFrames sparingly

An HTML tag known as an "iFrame" stands for an "inline frame." It is utilized to display external components from other websites on your own.

More precisely, it is employed for the embedding of material such as YouTube videos, Google Maps, and even banner ads.

• Although using iFrames can reduce storage usage, the tag slows down the functionality of your website, including site speed.
• The use of iFrames necessitates additional DNS lookups, script loading, and source page requests from the browser.
• JavaScript that render-blocks can also slow down the browser's response time, causing pages to load slowly.
• In addition to security problems, iFrames can harm user experience on your website. You expose holes in your website that hackers can attack if you include content from a hostile website.

It's best to lessen the number of iFrames on your website if you want to speed up the loading of your site and rank highly in Google search results.

Step 5: Dispose of any broken links

Internet visitors who stumble onto broken links are directed to a file or website that is no longer accessible.

An error code 404 is generated by this event.

Additionally, Google might negatively impact user experience on your website the more faults it can identify there. Error pages are disliked by everyone, right?

Due to the rise in bounce rates caused by these digital dead ends, your overall visitor volume, conversion rate, and most importantly, your SEO, will all suffer.

The user experience is also directly impacted by a large number of broken links, which can also slow down the loading time of the entire website.

Due to this, it's crucial to routinely monitor your website for broken links and eliminate them when discovered.

A number of tools exist to check for dead links, including Dead Link Checker and Broken Link Check.

These instruments assist you in locating broken links on your website so that you may either delete them or replace them with functional ones.

Step 6: Improve the location of your content

Your browser loads some content above the fold first when you visit a website.

As a result, the user will only view the material that is compatible with their device's screen and is visible at the top of the page.

• You must scroll down to the lower sections in order to load the content that is below the fold.
• The page will load much quicker if the upper section of the page has light-weight content.
• It's crucial to optimize content placement. The user experience on your page will increase, and your bounce rate will drop.

Websites with a lot of large-scale visual material should employ this approach.

Users can view a piece of the webpage while the rest of the elements are loading on the browser.

Step 7: Utilize cookies and caching

If you've spent any time online, you've probably heard the word "cache" at some point.

The technique of a browser temporarily storing web page files (usually static HTML content, such as photos and videos) in order to speed up page loading is known as caching.

As a result, repeat visitors will have a better user experience because the landing page will load quicker.

Small text files called cookies, on the other hand, help identify and track users as they browse your website.

Your users can save information to your website in this way, including login information and even product preferences.

Cookies can improve user experience overall and speed up login processes for visitors, even though caching has a more noticeable effect on your site's speed.

But pay attention to your cookie banner; if it's too heavy, it could add another two seconds or more to the load time of your website.

Step 8: Employ a content delivery network (CDN)

The idea behind a CDN is that the content of your landing pages is dispersed across a global network of computers.

The US server will distribute the content to the user from the US, and so on. You won't have to rely on a single server to provide your content to a user in the US and another in the UK.

Your page's speed will increase as a result of using content delivery networks, which distribute traffic more efficiently and relieve server load.

Although Cloudflare and Google's Cloud CDN are well-known CDNs, there are many other providers to choose from depending on your budget and server requirements.

Why does a website load quickly?

For a website to load quickly, a number of important characteristics must be present. Web hosting and browser cache are among them.

Reliable hosting service

Your website's speed is determined by the caliber of your web hosting.

• It takes a lot of research to find the ideal hosting solution.
• You must take into account the needs of your website and the expected level of traffic because there are numerous types of web hosting.
• Choosing a reputable hosting company with helpful support, dependable security, and adequate resources for your website's performance is crucial.

Caching on websites

After a browser loads a web page for the first time, browser caching allows it to save static web elements.

In this manner, the browser can access locally saved data each time a user accesses a website. This prevents it from continually downloading elements and sending additional HTTP requests.

You can speed up page loading by setting browser caching. Additionally, HTTP requests during traffic peaks allow you to conserve server resources.

Images, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are some of the components that are cached by browsers.

Image file compression

Usually, when you compress an image, nothing is cropped. Compression frequently has little impact on quality.

Lossy and lossless picture compression are the two types available.

• Lossy compression reduces the size of your image by deleting some of its data. If used excessively, this technique could degrade the quality of an image, so be careful how far you go.
• In order to reduce the file size, lossless compression throws away the image's metadata. The size won't be as small as with lossy compression, but the image quality will be preserved.

In contrast to lossy compression, the lossless approach allows you to restore the compressed image to its original state.

It's advisable to test out both approaches to see which compression option will best optimize your photographs.

Start with online resources like Compressor.io or ShortPixel.

Both platforms provide information on the differences in file sizes, formats, and quality after compression.

Using the appropriate picture file formats

You wouldn't believe how much the type of image file affects the quality and loading speed of your pictures.

PNG, JPEG, and GIF are the three image file types most frequently found online.

• Typically, the PNG format has the best quality. It works well for displaying text and small-detail visuals, such as icons, product photos on eCommerce websites, and screenshots.
• For pictures with a lot of color information, the JPEG format works well. With this file type, you can apply both lossy and lossless compression without the quality suffering. If you're aiming to entice site visitors with colorful visuals, JPEG is your friend because color theory may dramatically influence how online customers make purchasing decisions.
• The ideal format for animations is GIF. Given that it only allows 256 colors, this format might be too restrictive for complex, static graphic content. GIF files perform best with lossless compression since it keeps the quality of the animation intact. GIFs work well in more practical marketing pieces like blog posts, newsletters, and social media updates.

Using plugins sparingly

While excessive use of plugins can drastically slow down your page and site speed, they are highly helpful and typically make the job of the website owner a little bit easier.

The issue is that all of your website's add-ons utilize the same server resources. Additionally, all pages load more slowly the more plugins there are vying for the same amount of resources.

Audit each plugin that you have put on your website first (including your mobile site).

Then, delete all plugins that you aren't using to quickly and easily reduce the loading and page performance of your website by at least five seconds.

The importance of website speed

Since 70% of customers base their purchasing decisions heavily on website performance, your page load time is one of the most important elements in the success of your website.

It's reasonable to argue that page speed has a direct impact on your company's revenue, therefore you shouldn't ignore it.

In actuality, page views, conversion rates, and average order values are all directly and favorably impacted by fast mobile sites.

Your bounce rate will decrease the quicker your page loads.

Simply said, the bounce rate of your website reflects how satisfied visitors are with its pages.

A high bounce rate indicates that visitors leave your website quickly after scanning its content.

Therefore, a high bounce rate negatively affects your retention rate (the percentage of visitors who return to your site after their initial visit) and overall conversion rate (how many people make a purchase, get in touch with you, sign up for a newsletter, and so on).

Additionally, because Google prefers websites that load quickly, slow websites are less likely to appear high in search result listings (SERPs).

Consequently, your website receives less traffic and exposure from typical visitors.

Finding the time to identify strategies to speed up your website is crucial because of this.

What is the ideal loading time for a website?

To briefly address your question, yes, your website should load as quickly as possible, ideally in under a second. Although the effects won't be felt for three seconds, two seconds isn't too horrible either.

Generally speaking, the quicker your website speed, the better.

There are numerous methods for calculating page load times:

• Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures how long it takes a browser to receive the first byte of data.
• The speed index measures how long it takes a webpage to fully load in a browser.
• Page size is the sum of all the files on your website.
• The quantity of resources used, the number of HTTP requests made by your website, and the time taken for each request to be processed

An excellent standard to set is for your website to load in between two and three seconds.

On desktop and mobile devices, Google advises that a page should load in under three seconds.

Google's speed data make it clear that the likelihood of a bounce jumps by over 100% the instant your average page takes five seconds or longer to load.

Additionally, the server's response time must be under 200 milliseconds. If yours is greater than that, you should speak with your hosting company to learn about your alternatives for accelerating the process.

Additionally, Google has a recommended page size, which states that your content should occupy no more than 500 KB. Otherwise, you'll be slowing down your website load time by additional seconds.

However, the majority of websites fall far short of Google's requirements.

According to Google's survey, the average page load time on desktop computers was 4.7 seconds, compared to 11.4 seconds on mobile devices.

The typical webpage size was much larger than the recommended 500 KB at staggering 1.969 MB for desktop and 1.770 MB for mobile.

Although it might seem like Google has unreasonable standards, the more you can align your website with industry norms, the more favorably both users and the search engine will view it.

Tools to test the speed of your website

You may track your page speed using one of the many web tools available on the internet.

One of the most effective tools for website optimization is Google PageSpeed Insights.

This tool, which uses Google as its power source, is free to use and quickly produces a complete report on the speed of your website.

Simply enter your website's URL, and the tool will do a speed test to determine how quickly it loads in general.

Additionally, Google PageSpeed Insights makes suggestions for how to speed up your website load time.

You may speed up the loading of both your entire website and certain web pages by using Test My Site, another great website speed test tool.

By allowing you to assess how quickly other websites load their pages in comparison to your own, this tool goes a step further. Who doesn't enjoy learning about speed trends?

You can forecast conversion rates once the speed increases by comparing your website to others.

Another excellent free speed test option is Pingdom. The overall page size, HTTP requests, and load time are all calculated.

Pingdom offers advice on how to improve the performance of your website, much like Google PageSpeed Insights does.

While these tools offer helpful information about the performance of your website, they should not be viewed as set measurements but rather as guidelines for website optimization.

The best results come from rigorously experimenting with various speed optimization approaches and tracking the effects they have on your total speed statistics.