As a website owner, you should always look for ways to boost website performance. The reason for this is that you should never underestimate the impact site speed has on traffic, conversions, and revenue.
There is research that was conducted and they found out that 47% people expect a website to load in two seconds or less, and 40% of those participating in the survey said they’d likely abandon a web page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
Where you are searching on the internet today, think about how quickly you might leave a website if it loads ‘slowly’ (the ironic thing is that just years ago when we were on dial-up, I remember watching pages load! Remember when images would appear one line at a time! Did we lose our patience somewhere along the way? That is a topic for another discussion!)
So, before you release your website to proverbially “fend for itself” out there, follow these quick steps to improve its performance.
Top 5 Tips to Boost Website Performance
1. Use CSS in place of images
It doesn’t come as any surprise that high-quality images cause a dip in loading speed of a page. However, using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) will enable you to create highly quality preview visuals without the need for images. As a result, your website will load faster due to less load coming from rendering large images.
2. Optimize images
As a general rule of thumb, it can be said that larger the image, lower is the load speed. If the area where the image is to be placed has a maximum width or 300 px, you should crop the picture to 300 pixels wide and save it at 72DPI. Then save your image in an appropriate format including, JPEG, PNG, SVG, GIF based on what’s needed. For additional information about this, check out, WordPress Load Times II.
3. Optimize for mobile users
Mobile users are different from desktop users typically want data in bits and pieces that make sense. Optimizing design for mobile devices is a great way to gain a competitive advantage since there are so many websites that are failing to keep up with expectations of mobile users.
Here are few things you can do to make your site friendlier:
- Use CSS3 instead of image graphics to stimulate effects
- Eliminate all unnecessary image assets
- Use adaptive images fit for smaller devices
- Make design to be mobile-centric
4. Simplify code by minimizing the role of HTML, CSS, Javascript
To enhance your website’s performance, it’s crucial that you get rid of line breaks, extra spaces, and indentations in your code to make the pages as lean as possible. Do these tasks by using tools like YUI Compressor, css minifier, Google Closure Compiler, etc.
5. Make Javascript External and CSS to improve load speed
By using external files, you can use the pages load faster because CSS files and JavaScript are cached by the browser. Alternatively, if you utilize CSS in a page, place the CSS in its HEAD element. This should make the page appear as if it’s loading faster while it loads progressively.
Some of these things are easy, and some are a little more technical. They will all help boost website performance.Work on the ones you can handle and get help with the one’s you cannot do yourself!
If you have questions about your website, sign up for your complimentary website audit here!
I’m afraid it all sounds too technical for me. I don’t even know how to use CSS.
If you follow the link to WordPress Load Times you can see how you can easily compress the images and optimize them for faster loading, Patricia!
Great tips, Paul! I would like to learn more about your first tip about using CSS. Do you have any more detailed information on this that I could read?
Leslie – There will be more, but for a starter, check out these articles that talk about CSS in one form or another – https://digitalmaestro.com/?s=css
I have WP Smush. Would you recommend this? I got it because I read it in a book when I first began blogging.
I’d like to know the answer to this question, too! Paul?
Two Thumbs Up! (see answer above)
I love WP Smush! I install it on all my sites as well as my clients’ sites.
There is a free version as well as a premium version. I have the subscription to the premium version which allows for a lot of batch Smushing! The free version only permits a small # to be smushed at once I think.
So, yes! Yes I recommend WP Smush and WP Smush Pro!
Going to check WordPress Load Times. Thanks for your expertise Paul.
Let me know what you find and if you have any questions, Martha!
A few months ago I added the WP Smush plugin to my cross stitch blog and it really improved my page load times. I didn’t realize how heavy even my reduced images were and the plugin really helps me stay on top of that because sometimes I forget to reduce them before I try to load one into a post. I guess it’s just one of those things we sometimes forget about in the long list of things that a blog needs.
It is like having a safety net there for you 🙂 Glad it helps out!