Anything which functions and gives instant results becomes website speed optimization is important viral in no time, plus its demand from the consumer’s side also touches the sky.
In the case of a website too, speed plays a very important role because, in today’s time, where the majority keep browsing through different types of websites, they surely want to see the landing page within a second, but when it takes ages to load, then the company just loses customers.
When you also come across a website and tap on its link just to see what it is about, and even after five seconds, the site fails miserably in showing you anything at all so you directly close it instead of waiting for the whole day! Sometimes you also think that maybe changing the browsers would help, but again the turtle speed of the website tests your patience and eventually you prefer moving on to another site.
Therefore working on website speed optimization is the key factor to a successful business as the faster the site loads the better the user experience. It specifically impacts your conversion rates, repeat business, and search engine rankings so COME ON! which company will not like to see its site trending on the internet or get good user experience feedbacks from customers like “Great website,” “I had an excellent user experience,’’ and “I am recommending it to my family and friends.”
Let’s talk further about conversion rates:
Above, we discussed that a website’s slow loading discourages people from becoming your client, therefore faster the speed of the site the higher the rate of conversion. According to Google, even one-second speed advancement does wonders in increasing the conversion rate for mobile users by up to 27% and with 70% of shoppers buying on mobile devices. The figures tell that the site’s speed has a huge impact on your income capacity.
Lower the time your page takes to load as that will cut down the chances of your customer leaving your site without buying and purchasing the same articles from your competitor’s online shop. We do not think that you came this far just to bid farewell to your audience just because you did not take website speed optimization seriously.
Do you want to lose repeat customers also?
You already had so many clients, who regularly shopped from your site whenever they needed those products; your shop’s name would instantly cross their minds, but since your site’s speed has become an unwanted hindrance in their shopping experience, you just lost your customer’s loyalty and on top of that you expected to get new customers. Good joke! Are you ready to lose popularity? If not, then start working on your site’s speed optimization to achieve your target sales!
Google Search Ranking:
Everyone searches and trusts Google ranking and watching your website not appear in the top results will certainly lead you to a major disappointment. We guess it’s high time you improve your WSO as that allows Google to increase your ranking which further invites customers to discover your shop too. Sounds profitable right? So get started on it to earn millions!
Core Web Vitals:
Google Search keeps on updating to give the users the best experience by connecting them with quality websites and products they are looking for, so in 2021 Google added Core Web Vitals signals to its search algorithm merging with existing search signals to measure how fast users think your site is.
Web. dev by Chrome DevRel describes the following factors that help users perceive your webpage
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):
Largest Contentful Pait, reports the reading time of the largest image or text block visible within the viewport to when the page first started loading.
The factors that are considered for LCP are
- A) <img> elements
- B) <image> elements inside an <svg> element
- C) <video> elements (the poster image is used)
- D) An element with a background image loaded via the URL() function (as opposed to a CSS gradient)
CSS gradients are represented by the <gradient> data type, a special type of <image> made of a progressive transition between two or more colors. You can choose between three types of gradients: linear (created with the linear-gradient () function), radial (created with the radial-gradient () function), and conic (created with the conic-gradient () function). You can also create repeating gradients with the repeating-linear-gradient (), repeating-radial-gradient (), and repeating-conic-gradient () functions.
Gradients can be used anywhere you would use an <image>, such as in backgrounds and because gradients are dynamically generated, they can negate the need for the raster image files that traditionally were used to achieve similar effects. In addition, because gradients are generated by the browser, they look better than raster images when zoomed in, and can be resized on the fly.
- Block-level elements containing text nodes or other inline-level text elements children.
A Block-level element occupies the entire horizontal space of its parent element (container), and vertical space is equal to the height of its contents, thereby creating a “block”.
Browsers typically display the block-level element with a newline both before and after the element. You can visualize them as a stack of boxes.
A good LCP score is considered when a site loads in 2.5 seconds or less otherwise if it reaches 4.0 seconds then you need to work on it. To make sure that your site is receiving the desired LCP score, a good way of measuring is through the 75th percentile of page loads divided across mobiles and desktops.
First Input Delay (FID):
The measurement of time from when a user first interacts with a page (that is, when they click a link, tap on a button, or use a custom, JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction is done by First Input Delay (FID).
A good FID score is considered when sites aim to have a delay of 100 milliseconds or less because if it reaches 300 then you have a serious problem. The way of checking whether it’s good is to see the 75th percentile of page loads divided across mobile and desktop devices.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):
The largest burst of layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of a page is measured by Cumulative Layout Shift.
A layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one rendered frame to the next.
A burst of layout shifts, known as a session window, is when one or more individual layout shifts occur in rapid succession with less than 1 second in between each shift and a maximum of 5 seconds for the total window duration.
The largest burst is the session window with the maximum cumulative score of all layout shifts within that window.
The score should be 0.1 or less because if it is reaching 0.25, then you will need to improve the score.
You must be thinking that what factors affect the site’s speed so scroll down to read the details,
- Code:
Superfluous Code is poorly customized code that does not add any kind of meaningful value, functionality, or substance to your site. If you were to remove it, you will need to take extra consideration of what might break.
The code contains an unnecessary amount of :
Visual animations
Tracking pixels and monitoring tools
Chatbots
Widgets
These things too can curb the site’s performance and end up irritating your clients.
- Content Delivery Networks:
The larger the distance between the device making HTTP requests and your servers completing the requests, the longer your website files will take to send and load.
Solve this problem with a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is a collection of servers distributed around the world that hold cached copies of your website files. When a user visits your website, your CDN will determine the server closest to their physical location and deliver the files from that server.
This serves as a great way to help distribute your static assets across geographic regions and effectively bring the files closer to your users. CDN can also be beneficial if your website itself isn’t load-balanced across multiple regions and can help you boost performance considerably.
- Mobile Optimisation:
To ensure a great experience and consistent performance for all users, you need to take a mobile-first approach to your website. Responsive web development is fundamental, and it’s easier to do this at the start of a new project.
Use Google Analytics to take note of what devices your visitors use. If more users are on mobile, then make a mobile-first strategy a priority.
- Plugins:
Developers use plugins to boost performance, but they’re not always created with performance in mind. The bar for entry is low, so the quality often varies wildly between plugins. Use this feature in a restricted manner to increase the speed and functionality of the website.
- The CMS/Hosting Platform:
Hosting your own website is often expensive, time-consuming, and technically demanding. If your hosting is inadequate, your performance can take a hit. Single-instance servers often struggle to meet demand. And if you lack load balancing or content delivery networks, your users might struggle to access your site.
Service providers like HubSpot mitigate this hassle by managing it all for you in modern, distributed platforms. As they do this at a large scale, they have access to the experts required to make sure things are globally performing well, secure, and recognized.
- Image and file size:
Keep in mind that large graphics and photos can have a substantial impact on page load times. If you employ lots of high-resolution images, you can also negatively impact Core Web Vitals, which can affect your Google ranking.
Finding a balance between pages that need more impact is important, as those that require optimum performance. For example, your landing pages that host important CTAs will need to load fast and be as smooth as possible.
Please make sure that you’re not overusing images across your site and it would be better if you resize the image yourself instead of relying on the browser or server as it will ask for time so the smaller the size of the file the better.
Otherwise use a compression tool to reduce the file’s size in such a way that they are small enough to improve performance but large enough to retain quality.
A few recommended file types are as follows:
Photos best as JPG or WebP
Solid blocks of color are best suited to PNG
Less complex versions of the above can be used as SVG
- HTTPS requests:
All websites use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). For a website to load in a web browser, the browser must first send an HTTP request to the website’s hosting server. The server then sends back the requested resource. Each resource request decreases load speed, so the fewer requests you have, the better your site will perform.
If you want a ‘record-breaking’ performance, ensure your hosting provider can deliver content over HTTP2. HTTP2 is the modern equivalent of HTTP1 and is much faster and more reliable. It also has built-in multiplexing, so it can load more requests in parallel with each other. This helps to overcome lag issues that can crop up.
Browser Caching:
Caching is the process of storing data in a place where it can be easily accessed at a later date. A browser cache saves website data like HTML files and images on the visitors’ devices.
With an effective caching policy, you can:
Reduce page load times for repeat visitors
Speed up subsequent page visits
Use less bandwidth
Looking for answers regarding “How to Improve Website Optimization”?
For that read the suggestions below
- Publish Relevant, Authoritative Content:
Quality content created specifically for your targeted audience increases their interest and even becomes a game changer for your website so show the world that only your content is what they need.
Keywords
Identify and target a specific keyword phrase for each authoritative content page on your website.
Repeat your keyword phrase several times throughout the page—once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs, and two to four more times throughout the remaining content.
Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags (especially an H1), and other emphasis tags to highlight these keyword phrases, but don’t overdo it.
- Post Content Regularly:
Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best clues to a site’s relevancy.
People are more inclined to check active pages instead of outdated ones. When even you are looking to order anything, do you order from the page, whose last activity was last year or yesterday? Makes sense right?
You can even try out blogging as writing additional content; heavy with keyword phrases can also boost your search engine rankings.
- Metadata:
Each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata or information about the contents of your page which is important for you to review and update metadata as your site changes over time.
3.1. Title Metadata:
Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. It is the most important metadata on your page.
3.2. Description Metadata:
The textual description that a browser may use in your page search return is the descriptive metadata. It’s the site’s window display that should be so appealing that people should be left with no other choice, but to click on your site’s link.
- Have a link-worthy site
A content-rich, authoritative, and honest website helps visitors learn more about what they are interested in and is most likely to attract links from other websites, which improves your search engine optimization.
Add relevant links within the text to improve the authority of the website.
- Use alt tags
Describe your image and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. They allow search engines to locate your page, which is central especially for those who use text-only browsers or screen readers.
Unfortunately, companies ignore working on website speed optimization and invest more in paid marketing, content, social media, and design, and even after constant changes and updates in Google rankings, it’s surprising that why don’t companies make the most out of it in making a speedy website, to give a tougher time to their rivals in the market?
Now you know how to go about it so Good luck!
