Websites get more complex and bigger with each passing day. This leads to slower loading of websites and ultimately lower sales conversions.
An average online shopper expected a website to load in just four seconds in 2006. Over the years, remarkable technological innovations have made it more difficult to meet an online shopper’s expectations. Today, an online shopper wants a website to load in just two seconds. Considering that the loading time of a website is so important, even Google has started to take site speed into account in its algorithm when ranking websites.
If your website is performing poorly, users won’t even think twice before leaving. Here are some things you need to do to optimize your website speed.
Modularity
If it’s possible to combine two CSS classes and use less code to get the same result, you should do it instantly. This would make the code modular. However, this might not be necessary if you’re using basic HTML and CSS. On the other hand, following these tips becomes essential if your website is in the complex world of JavaScript.
HTTP minification and dependency requests
Dependency requests have been the main reason behind slow loading speed of a website. Any type of additional request adds overhead and a new layer of complexity to the download and parsing process. Calling images from a style sheet also counts as a request. Therefore, you should limit the use of alternative optimization methods such as SVG or sprites.
If your website is large, you should consider using a content delivery network (CDN). It would eliminate any kind of slow server connections, reduce bandwidth and improve overall availability.
Write more readable and smarter code
The code being written can also be the reason behind slow loading of a website. Inefficient CSS or bloated JavaScript can affect load times in unimaginable ways. So instead of writing the path to a chain of selectors, you might want to use the smallest uniquely identifiable selector.
Simple HTML maintenance
To write more efficient CSS selectors and keep bloat to a minimum, one will have to write efficient HTML codes.
Reset CSS will lead to redesign of all common elements. This means that even if you’re not targeting the extra div, the extra div will most likely slow things down because its padding and margin would be reset to a minimum. The problem would not be serious until a dozen divs are restarted.
Compress images and text
There are several tools that can help you compress the text and images that you are using on your website.
A website that loads slowly interrupts the visitor’s browsing experience. Apart from file size, there are other reasons like low server memory, data influx, site design, etc. that affect the performance and speed of a website. So the bottom line is that you should monitor your website performance at regular intervals as it makes the difference between generating or not generating revenue.
If you have no idea how to optimize the loading speed of your website, you can contact an expert web development company.