How to Make Your Website Fast: 6 Must-know Tips and Tricks
In this fast-paced world, we like everything to be quick; the same is true for web browsing. If a website takes longer than 2-3 seconds to open, a large number of users usually leave. As a result, the key element to getting the desired traffic on your website is to make it fast and enhance the user experience.
Moreover, a survey disclosed that around 79% of customers would not return to a website solely because of its slow loading speed. Therefore, in this blog post, we are going to uncover exclusive tips and tricks to keep your website in the utmost optimal condition. Let's get started right away!
Reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB)
The amount of time your website takes to start loading is as important as the time it takes to load the page fully. TTFB (Time to First Byte) is a term used to describe the time a browser takes to get its first byte of data from the server. When users go to any website, their browser sends an HTTP request to the specific server, and there are three steps- DNS, Server processing, and response between the request and the first byte. Google suggests that the ideal TTFB should be less than 200 milliseconds.
With the help of Chrome's Developer Tools or a third-party tool, you can learn about your site's TTFB. The TTFB depends on network issues, dynamic content creation, web server configuration, and traffic. The best way to minimize your website's TTFB is to enable caching.
Run a Compression Audit
Adding image graphics to your website makes it more engaging, but the downside is that it can make it slow. But if your files are the smallest size without compromising quality, then you are on the right track. The smaller your file sizes are, the less time they will take to load, resulting in an overall minimum time to open the website. Using lots of images and content can often result in file sizes of more than 100 KB. As a result, your website can get slow.
Various tools are available that can help in completing the compression audit and learning about the size of your file. Here is an example of how one of the prominent tools helps in reducing the size of the files.
Reduce the Number of Plugins
For websites, plugins are one of the vital components as they help include the features recommended by third parties. However, the problem is that the more plugins you use, the more resources are required to run them. In addition, with time, the plugins have grown, and some of them may no longer be in use. As a result, the large number of plugins can slow down your website and put it at security risk.
The best solution for that is to check the plugins on your website and remove the ones that are no longer in use. To do that, you need to figure out which plugins are influencing the speed of your website. In addition, the quality of the plugin also plays a vital role in the website's speed. Make sure to avoid using the plugins to load tons of scripts and styles or offer a lot of database queries.
Minimize HTTP requests
HTTP Requests are made to load the images, stylesheets, and scripts on the website. As a result, if your website has a plethora of on-page components, page rendering will be time-consuming. To minimize the HTTP requests, the first thing you should do is to learn about how many requests your website is making. Use the browser's Developer Tools if you have Google Chrome and find out the number of HTTP requests your site makes. Follow-up is the illustration of how the HTTP request page will look like.
You can check and remove the HTTP requests that will significantly enhance the speed of your website. There are other things you may notice of the sheet, such as combining, which we will discuss in a minute.
Minify and Combine Files
After learning about the number of requests your website makes, it is time to understand how to reduce it. You can start with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files, as they are important in determining the website's appearance. In addition, they also make a number of requests when a user visits the website. You can incorporate the JavaScript and CSS files into one if your website runs them frequently. In addition, to minimize, you need to get rid of all the unwanted formatting, code, and whitespace on the website.
Furthermore, you can take the help of several methods to combine and minify the files. Below is an example of one of the popular tools that help streamline this process for you.
Reduce Server Response Time
The amount of time the DNS lookup takes is one of the major factors in how fast your website page loads. If you don't know about DNS- it stands for domain name system, a server with a database of IP addresses and the associated hostname. The faster the DNS looks, the better your website will work. However, if your website is running slow, you can move to a faster DNS provider. In addition, for example, check out the DNS speed comparison report to get a rough idea. By switching to a better DNS provider, you can cut down the loading of your website exponentially.
Final Words
Here, you get to learn about the detailed information about how you can make your website faster for users. You can use all these methods for your website to get more traffic and improve your conversion rates. However, to make a website faster, all these methods are just actually the tip of the iceberg and cannot be put in one place. If you want a more comprehensive understanding, then it is wise to access more resources or get professional assistance.
