Ever try to reach a website only to find out that it takes around 5 seconds to load. That may not seem like a lot of time but in this day and age of instantaneous connections, 5 seconds is the difference between holding onto a lead and losing them. According to a report by the Microsoft Bing search team, a 2-second longer delay in page responsiveness reduced user satisfaction by 3.8%, increased lost revenue per user by 4.3%, and a reduced clicks by 4.3%. When it comes to the digital world every second counts! That’s why just below we are going to go over 7 Easy Tips to Improve Website Speed.
1. Proper Hosting
When it comes to website/domain hosting there are a plethora of options on the market. Choosing the right one is imperative when it comes to your business. Although there are a vast amount of companies that offer hosting capabilities, there is only a handful that offers impeccable service.
Many digital marketers out there fall victim to the shared hosting service. This offer may be appealing at first glance (Unlimited Page Views!). However, the drawback of a service like this is incredibly slow sight speed. As your website starts to gain more features, content, etc. you will see the speed of your website exponentially decrease. Causing your customers and potential clients to become frustrated and/or impatient, which in turn is hurting your sales.
2. Caching Plugins
The fantastic thing about running websites on WordPress is the vast amount of plugins that are created by the community. An important plugin to utilize is a caching plugin. Caching refers to the storing of memory on your site. As users navigate through your website content that memory will need to be called on to show the proper text/images. The more content hosted on your website the more memory that is going to be needed to hold all the information. Thanks to caching plugins like W3 Total Cache website pages, content, images, etc. will load drastically faster. Giving your users a more fluid experience on your site.
3. Content Delivery Network (CDN)
If your website has a significant amount of blogging and content on it then you should definitely be utilizing a CDN. Essentially what a CDN accomplishes is taking your static files (Java Scripts, Images, TXT, MP3) and allows users to download them as fast as possible by locating the data on the server closest to the user.
All of the top bloggers utilize CDN because of how dense their websites are with content. For those that are actively posting new blog post, images, videos on their website should look into a CDN service. MAX CDN has received outstanding reviews and is very reasonable on pricing. In addition, their users dashboard is very easy for new users to learn, they have video tutorials to help you along the way.
4. Image Compression
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What they don’t tell you is that 10 pictures around 1 MB each will make your website as slow as molasses! Images and videos are a fantastic way to tell a story, connect with users, and creatively share information. However, images and videos are the number one culprit to website speed latency. Compressing images or videos can be done in a way with no loss of quality.
Thanks to the WordPress community there are tons of plugins you can utilize that will compress images/videos upon uploading. However, if you are not utilizing plugins one of my favorite and most recommended image compression sites is kraken.io. Not only do they allow you to compress images for free (up to 1 MB), you can upload multiple images at once! Saving you a ton of time and energy.
5. Deactivate Hot Linking and Content Leeching
Hot Linking is a form of highway bandwidth robbery. This occurs when other sites direct links to images on your site in their articles to avoid hosting the images themselves. This puts an increasingly high amount of workload on your servers for zero return. Thus, causing your site to become increasingly slower as more sites scrape yours for content.
if you create custom images for your site on a regular basis.
Place this code in your root .htaccess file:
disable hotlinking of images with forbidden or custom image option
RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^€
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?sparringmind.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?feeds2.feedburner.com/sparringmind [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)€ – [NC,F,L]
You will have to change the “feedbruner.com/sparringmind” with your image feed. Otherwise, your images will not display properly.
6. Lazy Loading Your Images
This is an excellent way to improve website speed. Lazy Loading refers to loading images on your site above the fold (area visible by user). All the other images will be stored away and called on as the user navigates through your website. This will allow your website to be minimalistic when it comes to images and videos. While still captivating users with your awesome imagery giving them a full and well-rounded experience.
7. Delete Drafts
As I am writing this blog post I have saved it 6 times and there are probably still more to come. However, when I am done writing this and the post is published, now being read by you. Does anyone need those rough drafts? The answer is no! However, WordPress likes to hold onto those old drafts and take up memory costing you site speed. Utilize Revision Control to delete all those unwanted drafts and improve your site speed.
That is going to wrap up this session! Utilize these 7 Easy Tips to Improve Website Speed. Google now takes site speed into account in their SEO rankings. Start making your website faster and more fluid! Stay tuned for the next update!