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The speed of your website is a very important component in many areas. You yourself have a large part in the speed of your website. By improving your website speed with implementations such as lazy loading, inline CSS and caching plug-ins, you will outpace the competition. Does this popular scripting language raise your eyebrows? No problem. In this blog, we explain everything to you clearly.
The first and perhaps biggest reason to optimize the speed of your website at all times is the influence of the almighty Google. We often harp on the significant value of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to obtain the highest possible SEO score. In fact, this will raise you significantly in Google’s rankings. In addition to using the right keywords, Google also richly rewards the speed of your website. In short; the faster your website is, the higher your website ranks in Google.
It’s nice to be found quickly in Google, but when visitors find your website, the user experience must be optimal. Several factors can affect this experience, but the biggest factor is and always will be the speed of your website. Endless waiting after a click on your page or faltering scroll down the page generates a lot of frustration for your website visitor. This will make them think twice in the future before visiting your website. The other side of the coin is also true. Clicking and scrolling through your website without any problems will be appreciated by visitors. The customer journey of the visitor visiting your website then increases.
The bar of good loading time for your website is being raised all the time. Specifically, visitors anno 2022 expect a load time of two seconds or less. In fact, studies show that for more than a two-second delay, a 7% conversion loss is the consequence. As a result, the loss of revenue at the end of the year is incalculable.
You don’t have to be hand-clocked to test your website speed. Several tools have been made available for this that provide insights about website speed down to the nanosecond. One such tool is Google Pagespeed Insights. This tool from Google provides insight into areas of improvement for your website to boost website speed. After using Pagespeed Insights, your website will receive a PageSpeed Insights score with a maximum score of 100. For a manageable score, it is always important to get at least above 70 (when using Desktop computers).
Another useful tool is the global Pingdom tools. This tool provides particular insight into which objects within your Web site are causing delays. Consider complex Javascript files, images and high-resolution videos. Pingdom tools allow you to test your website speed through the closest server, in the case of the Netherlands it is the server in Frankfurt. GT Metrix is the last highlighted tool. Also with this tool you get a comprehensive overview of your current website speed including options to speed up your load time.
We wouldn’t be 2manydots if we didn’t provide you with some practical tips to optimize the speed of your website. The suggestions are briefly explained below.
Website speed is largely determined by the server on which the website is running. When you choose a cheap hosting party, it is likely to be low in price because the party hosts as many Web sites as possible on the same server. This is very detrimental to the speed of your website. Website owners are therefore advised to choose a good hosting company that can offer you the power that comes with fast load time.
Images are the decoration of your website. However, images do have a big impact on the speed of your website. With too many images on your website, the speed of your website thunders rapidly. Also, images on websites are regularly much larger than they actually need to be. Therefore, double check the file size of your images and reduce images where possible. Your website’s load time will benefit from this.
Nowadays, you can also submit images in a new file type: WebP. This file type is as much as 30% smaller than PNG, the file type primarily used for images. This file type is now supported by all browsers.
Lazy loading causes your website to not load in its entirety when a visitor enters. This takes a lot of power which causes your website to require a much higher load time and makes your website slow. Many images on your website are probably not even visited by your visitor, so they are loaded unnecessarily. With lazy loading, all large files (images, videos) on a Web site are not loaded until the visitor has almost reached the file. So your website loads only the necessary files, which benefits your website speed.
Embedding means embedding your files. This allows you to avoid touching files and still show the files on another website. This limits the file size of the videos and audio clips on your website. Your website is also going to gain a boost in speed with this little trick.
For every image, video or other element on your website, an HTTP request is submitted. HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol, and these requests cause your website to decrease in speed. So start by finding out how many HTTP requests your website is making at the time of checking. In Google Chrome, you can check this by using the developer tools . So it is important to keep these requests to a minimum to ensure the speed of your website.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of different servers spread across a variety of data centers around the world. CDN ensures that your website can be offered worldwide. Your Web server will automatically keep you connected to other servers around the world. Because the servers of a Content Delivery Network are spread around the world, websites connected to these servers have fast load times. A tip that will certainly be of use to your website.
After incorporating all these tips, the speed of your website will increase significantly. If so, don’t let it go. This is because the speed of your website varies every day due to the changes you make to your website. Therefore, it is important to keep doing speed checks. Only then can you be sure that your website will still have the right speed in a while.
Many websites use a caching plugin. With these caching plugins, your browser creates a temporary copy of the website you are currently visiting (also called browser caching). During browser caching, a back up of the page is stored. The great advantage of caching plugins is that the website you are visiting, using the copy, does not have to be reloaded over and over again. Through the WordPress dashboard, you can implement this cache plugin.
All of these implementations are very difficult to place without knowledge and experience. Yet the speed of your website is too important not to do anything about it. One solution to this is to outsource speed optimization to a professional Internet agency. 2manydots is one such professional internet agency with more than sixteen years of experience in optimizing websites. So we are happy to help you optimize your website.
