Speed Up Your Load Time to Optimize Your Website

Websites nowadays have become more than just an online presence. They are now a crucial factor in marketing, branding, and even customer loyalty. A fast website optimization indicates that your business is tech-savvy and up-to-date with the latest trends. 

An Important Component of Website Optimization

After all, no one wants to visit a website that takes ages to load! Speed is also an indication of how easily accessible your website is to potential customers. It makes the platform more appealing visually and user-friendly. Therefore,  speed is a major component of website optimization.

According to the Daily Egg, a one-second load time delay leads to 11% fewer page views, a 7% loss in conversion rates, and a 16% reduction in customer satisfaction. Therefore, when it comes to page load times, every second does indeed count.

The faster your website loads, the better your search engine results will be and the greater the conversion rate. Having a fast-loading website also reduces the risk of users getting frustrated and leaving your site before viewing content. 

This added speed has to do with the shift from desktop to mobile. To stay on top with your audience, you need a website that stands out in their search results. With so many websites competing for visibility, it’s important that yours is fast, user-friendly and above all, optimized for a variety of devices. 

Moreover, Google performed a study about bounce rates. When your load time increases from one second to three seconds, the bounce rate also increases to 32%. Jump up the load time to 5 seconds, and the bounce rate goes up to a whopping 90%.

The speed at which your site loads is therefore an important factor in whether or not users continue on to another site. Google has influenced website rankings, lowering the rankings of sites with slow load times while promoting the adoption of accelerated mobile pages (AMPs).  

Because your website serves as the first point of contact for your brand, it has to be fast, effective, and engaging. In a survey performed by Website Performance Testing, 73% of respondents said that page loading time was the primary factor in their decision to return to a website. The study found that the average user will abandon a website after waiting only 5 seconds. 

Make your website responsive

A responsive website automatically adapts to the device and browser on which it is viewed. This is important for your site because it will automatically resize to fit the screen. This means that your visitors can access all of the content without having to zoom in or scroll horizontally. Therefore, building a responsive site means building a site that is also accessible to view.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network, or CDN, is a network of servers that work together to host and distribute your website’s content. A CDN will host your website’s data on servers around the world. 

In turn, your visitors are close to a server that hosts content. Once the data is accessed, it is cached and stored on the server for a short time. This means that if a user from New York visits your site and a user from Los Angeles also visits your site, both will have access to the latest versions of the data. 

This is beneficial because it will improve the load speed of your site. If your site is getting visitors from around the globe and you’re hosting your platform on a single server, you may find that load times are frustratingly slow. 

With a CDN in place, your site is hosted on different servers, which can be accessed by users worldwide. Therefore, a CDN produces faster load times and makes your site more reliable, as distributes traffic evenly so one server is not overwhelmed by the demand.

Enable gzip compression

Gzip compression is a method used to reduce the size of the content on your website. This method allows your website to load faster. Therefore, the technology is a standard feature on all modern servers. 

While it’s useful to have, it’s often not enabled. Make sure your web hosting company enables the feature. If you have WordPress, you can use plugins that will enable gzip compression. 

Alternatively, you can also make some changes to your website’s code to enable it. The best way to do this is to ask your web developer to make the changes for you. It’s important to note that not all hosting providers will enable gzip compression. Therefore, when you’re choosing a web hosting provider, make sure to check if they enable gzip compression. If not, you’ll need to find a hosting provider that does.

Use fast and efficient web hosting

When choosing a web hosting for your website, it’s also important to find a provider that offers fast hosting. There are two key factors to look out for when it comes to searching for a host: bandwidth and data transfer. 

Bandwidth refers to how much data your website can receive at once. Data transfer refers to how quickly your website is able to receive the data it needs. 

Generally, you should look for a web hosting provider that offers unlimited bandwidth and data transfer. Some providers will offer “unlimited” bandwidth and a data transfer rate of 1 GBPS. Although this sounds impressive, it’s a very small amount of bandwidth. 

In fact, it’s not even close to what is considered “unlimited.” Therefore, you need to scrutinize your choices.

Who to Call to Speed Up Your Website’s Load Speed

The first step towards optimizing your website is to make sure that it’s responsive. Next, you should make sure that you’re using a CDN and enabling gzip compression. Finally, use a web hosting provider with a fast bandwidth and data transfer rates.

 Follow these steps and you’ll have an optimized website in no time. To help you with your goals, contact Website Depot – the authority for all things in the digital sphere. Call (888) 477-9540 today.