Website Speed Improvement Tips
Website visitors are impatient. If the page loading time is high automatically the visitor look for another website.
They may not come back to the same website. Therefore, improving website speed is important to retain visitors, to retain the position in search engine ranking. Google’s search engine algorithm takes into account the speed of a website while ranking. This article discusses important tips to load a website faster.
- Check current speed: First, check current speed of the website. It will help to track the worth of improvements done to the site. Based on the results can make the changes further and gives the clarity which improvements will give good page loading times. To check the page loading times there are many open source tools and browser add-ons for different browsers are available at no cost.
- Image scale and optimization: If the image size is larger than you want, use image tools to make the re-size image to required size. If the image is needed in the same size convert to another format. Different formats of images are available at present. If the image is converted from one format to another, it will dramatically change the size. First, know the format basic purpose and based on the relevance to the website content add to the page.
- GIF: GIF format will support a range of 256 colors. It is a bit mapped image format. For web graphics, logos, for small images, transparency and animation GIF is most commonly used format as well it is the ideal choice.
- JPEG: JPEG allows to compress large images to smaller size than in any other format. The image quality is also not impaired because of, it allows the right size and quality of image. JPEG uses lossy compression algorithm for this purpose.
- PNG: When high quality and transparent images are needed, PNG is the best choice.
- Content optimization: Instead of sending data in different files with full of HTTP, Javascript, CSS and other content, send in a single small file. Use HTTP compression and combine the Javascript and CSS. Minimize the source code.
- Put the stylesheet reference at the top or in head it will help you give a feel that the page loading faster.
- If you put the script at top it will block all other components of the page and feels loading slowly because the browser can download two components at a time from a host.
Once you make the changes, recheck website speed. If the results are shown for any pages have no improvement analyze where the page is taking more time to load and make the changes there.