Users nowadays are less tolerant to slow loading speeds. A faster loading website usually have more visitors compared to a slower one. As Internet connection speeds are increasing, users expect sites to be speedy too. Google prefers to reward fast websites with high ranking positions in search results. For a developer, not only developing a site, although developing a faster site should be the priority.
7 tips listed below will help you to achieve a faster website speed target:
- Eliminate unnecessary pluginsInstall only those plugins which provide you functionality needed by your website. Every plugin you install requires resources to run, so more the plugins installed, more the resources used, less is the loading speed. As various plugins are provided for free on Internet, don’t install them all to take a trial. In case you install them, don’t forget to eliminate the unnecessary one’s.
- Resize images before uploadingIn WordPress sites, you can upload image with any size and can resize them later at site’s backend. This seems to be easy but in this process your web browser needs to execute multiple commands which can slow down your website. Try to resize your images using image editing program before uploading it on your site.
- Keep site’s scripts up-to-dateYou should check regularly if any of the new release of scripts for your site are available. If any of the updates are there, upgrade them as soon as possible to improve your site code and consequently, speed will also increase.
- Use CDNsContent delivery networks (CDNs) are a huge network of servers that are installed around the world. Instead of storing your website content or data such as images locally, enable CDN to serve the process of loading your data to the server which is closest to your visitor. This will allow your site to load faster.
- Turn on Gzip compressionGzip compression is newly introduced technology that allows the size of browser-based HTTP responses to be minimized upto 70%. it can speed up your site’s load time. We can turn on Gzip compression by installing a plugin like WP HTTP Compression tool.
- Enable browser cachingIf you want to allow your visitor’s browser to store copy of your sites webpages, so that on next visit content can be rolled up within the cache, browser caching technology is used. This saves the resources used to display your pages, resulting in faster loading speed.
- Place CSS files at the top and Javascript code at bottomKeep your site’s code neat by adding CSS files to the top of your page’s code and Javascript code to the bottom. Adding CSS files to top of the page prevents progressive rendering and thereby saves resources that web browsers use to load elements of your pages. Adding Javascript to bottom prohibits your pages to wait for full code execution before loading thereby, increasing loading speed.
These are few easiest techniques that can be used to speed up your site. Our professional web developers in Halifax know how to make your website fast yet deliver amazing graphics for super user experience. Contact us to know more or get a web design quote.