It's no secret that website loading times matter a lot to visitors. Statistics show that users abandon websites if they load too slowly, but how slow is too slow?
According to recent data, a mobile website that takes more than three seconds to load will lose up to 53% of visitors. If you access the website via a PC, you can expect to lose up to 47% of all users if the website takes two seconds or more to load. Despite this, 70% of mobile websites take more than five seconds to load.
The explanation for the high number of visitors who abandon the website is due to frustration at waiting for the page to load. However, loading time is also important to Google, so if you are working on improving your SEO, loading time should be a factor you focus on.
Tip no. 1: Optimise images
One of the keys to an engaging and user-friendly web design is high-quality images. But if they are not compressed properly, images take up a lot of space and slow down your pages. Images account for approximately 21% of your website's total size, and large uncompressed images can quickly slow down your website.
The good news is that image optimisation is one of the easiest ways to improve your website's loading time. The key is to find the balance between the smallest image size you can have while maintaining high quality. The most straightforward way to achieve this is through image compression.
You can compress images using programmes such as Adobe Photoshop, or you can compress your images directly on your website using plugins. It is also important to choose the right format. Stick to PNG files for graphics and JPEG for photographs. In addition to compression and resizing, you can also combine images using CSS sprites. CSS sprites turn all your images into one large image, so it loads all at once instead of separately.
Tip #2: Compress files
Images aren't the only files on your website that take up too much space. Bloated CSS, HTML, audio, video, and JavaScript files can be the reason your website loads slowly. Compressing files can be as simple as grouping CSS files together or removing HTML code.
However, the most popular way to compress files on your website is through Gzip, which is a file format and software solution. All in all, just like images, you want to ensure that you are not slowing down download times by having unnecessarily large files.
Tip #3: Reduce redirects
When a user attempts to visit a website but is instead sent to another, this is called a redirect. It is like being given directions to a place, only to be told to turn back and continue to a new location. This wastes time and energy for the server and increases loading time. If there are any redirects you can remove, you should do so. Avoid sending users to a page that has a redirect, and also avoid search engines that optimise pages with redirects. The fewer redirects your website has, the faster it will load.
Tip no. 4: Utilise browser caching
Use browser caching on your website. This means that copies of a website's static content are stored so that when you return, you don't have to reload the entire page. Static content includes HTML, CSS, images, and JavaScript. As a website owner, you can tell browsers how long to store cached content. To maximise your loading times, you can utilise the browser's cache time to speed up your website's loading time. Using cache power reduces bandwidth consumption, reduces the number of server requests and generally provides a better user experience.
You can modify the .htaccess file via an FTP client. Alternatively, if you are on WordPress, there are a number of different caching plugins available. Ask Mr. Toucans.
Tip #5: Use a content delivery network
A content delivery network, or CDN, may be just what your website needs to speed up loading times. A CDN is a distributed server system that hosts your website's files across a large network of servers located around the globe. This reduces your website's loading time by allowing visitors to download files from the server closest to them geographically. This means that no matter where in the world your visitors are located, they will experience the same loading time. CDNs are synchronised simultaneously across the globe. To use a CDN on your website, simply find a service provider and register your website, which Mr. Toucans offers.
Increase your page speed to achieve good SEO results
While Google is tight-lipped about how they use website speed in their algorithms, they have been using speed as a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile websites for several years.
Google is committed to providing visitors with the best possible experience on its search engine, which largely means that visitors find the right information quickly and easily. If the bounce rate is low and stable, and the website shows long visit frequencies, Google will view the website positively and thus also prioritise it in relation to the keywords used (SEO). High loading times help your website get prioritised in Google's algorithms, which means your website will rank higher in search results. If you're investing time, money, and energy into search engine optimisation, the last thing you want is to lose visitors because of slow loading times, so here are five surefire tactics to boost your website's loading speed.
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