Web page speed is essential for the whole website experience as well as the other factors that the page includes. The fundament that makes the page popular for users is the speed they can find needed information. In that manner, a web page should not be cluttered with too many
elements such as graphics, music, slides, or other material that elaborate the user interface but take too long for the page to load. In this article, our web design agency in Winnetka explores this complex factor as we reveal the importance of page speed for your website.
What is Web Page Speed Optimization and what to consider?
Optimization of the webpage should provide users with quick loading of page content and that speed is expected to be measured in seconds, but without losing on quality of other webpage materials and data that are integrated. For successful page optimization, the following elements should be considered:
- Unoptimized images and inefficiently encoded images
Images are a big problem because they are large and therefore take a long time to download, so they should have the proper size. You can use different programs for image optimization that can compress images without losing their quality. Also, you can defer images, which means that they will show up later while the user is scrolling to the important part of the page. - Minification and Script compression
This means making files smaller by removing its unnecessary components
- Minify JavaScript and other scripts that are not viral, recommendations are to add them to the footer, so that they can be last loaded.
- File size minification
This refers to the HTML and CSS structure. It means that if HTML or CSS style is made without good order, it will be loaded slower. Also, compression of CSS and JS is recommended.
- Defer offscreen images with potential savings of 392 KB
- Web host efficiency and embedded media such as video being pulled from another site
If the tools on your website are hosted elsewhere, it can slow down performance. That can be managed by hosting files on your own server, but it also can cause tools and apps not to work properly. - Enable text compression with potential savings of 2 KB
- Pre Connection to required originals
- The use of apps such as Flash
- Avoid multiple page redirections
- Overly complicated themes and designs
The more complicated plugins, themes, and designs are uploaded, and the larger their number, the heavier and slower the page will run. So the solution might be looking for a simpler theme without too many unnecessary animations, sliders, and elements alike. - Preload key requests
- Usage of video formats for animated content
- Heavy widget usage
- Cache Policy
Caching is the process of temporarily storing data in a user’s browser for quick access to frequently used pages. This includes dynamic elements that are often changed on your webpage for instance new posts, but also those that are static and change rarely like images, videos, audio, CSS, and JS files. Resetting the cache is another important thing when you make modifications to a webpage. - Avoiding enormous network payloads and excessive DOM size (361 elements)
Mobile Page Speed Optimization
As mobile usage on the internet becomes very popular, every website has to have its mobile website version. This implies page optimization to benefit mobile devices. But the speed of a webpage depends much on users’ internet connection, much more than in the case of a desktop computer. So altering and enhancing the theme and design of the mobile page version is the key to speeding up and improving performances.
Final Thoughts
Due to the short attention span of today’s internet users, people are reluctant to wait forever for the website to load. Bear in mind that each user that leaves your website before it is fully loaded equals a sales opportunity lost. Because of the importance of page optimization, you can use programs and tools on the internet that can measure and show you how good your site’s speed and performance are as well as provide insights into what can be improved to fully optimize web pages.
Overall speed optimization directly affects Google’s site rankings. It means that as faster your website speed is, and the better the user experience, the website will be higher ranked by Google’s algorithm, resulting in more frequency in your website and domination of Google’s search engine which will attract more visitors. With elevated visibility and trafficking comes more buyers and commerce.