How Can I Reduce The Loading Time Of My Website?
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Reduce Loading Time of a Website : It is said that patience is a virtue, but for several people, it is typically a difficult idea to practice. This best fits in the case of users who visit a website that takes quite a time to load. Users are increasingly infatuated with fast loading websites, and if a site responds slowly, visitors lose patience, press the back button, and are less likely to return.
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Website speed optimization is not only important for users visiting the website, but also for search engine rankings. According to an update, Google declared that it would incorporate website speed into its search ranking algorithms. Thus, it becomes a necessary factor to consider if anyone wants to rank on the top of search engine result pages. And hence, you should know ways to improve your website loading time.
Top 10 Tips To Reduce Loading Time of a Website
Some of the following ways for reducing the website loading time are:
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Check The Current Website Speed
The first thing that you have to do is to analyze the current speed of your web page. This is because it will allow you to track the improvement over regular time intervals. Also, it will make sure that any modifications you are making are positively affecting and improving the website load time.
There are several free and paid tools that one can use to check how much time a website takes to load. Here are a few of them:
Google Page Speed - It is an open-source tool provided by Google.Inc that is designed to help optimization of the website’s performance. You will also get suggestions on methods to fix website performance concerns.
GTmetrix – It is another fabulous tool that displays the speed and performance of a website on various devices and errors.
Pingdom – It is a tool that monitors the global performance and availability of the website, application, and server.
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Image Optimization to Reduce Loading Time of a Website
You should know when and where to use the appropriate file format of your images. Changing files from one format to a different file format and using them directly can dramatically reduce the file size of an image.
An ideal format for images with some colors, moving objects, etc. is a GIF. JPEG is an excellent format for images that comprise loads of colors and photographs. PNG is the best option when you require high-definition images with no background.
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Scale Images Properly – decrease load time of website
Before uploading, images must be properly scaled. Understand this fact: If you have an image of 1000 X 1000 pixels, and you reduce it to 100 X 100 pixels using CSS. The problem is that the browser still loads the actual size of an image, that is, in this case, 10 times more than required.
Thus, avoid using a large size image as you have the option to set the width and height attributes of an image in its <img> element.
You can change the image to the required dimensions using an image editor such as Photoshop or any web-based image editors. This reduces the image file size which helps to decrease web page loading time.
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Content Compression and Speed Optimization
Compressing the content present on your website can have a tremendous impact on reducing the website load time. On using HTTP compression, your web page data will be sent to a single small file rather than a request that comprises many different files. This will remove all the unwanted white space characters like space, newline, tab, etc.
You can customize and minify the source code by combining the JavaScript and CSS files.
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Keep Stylesheet References In The Top
You should keep the stylesheet references at the top i.e. in the <head> element of the source code. It allows the pages to render the styles gradually. Further, it doesn’t violate the W3C standard.
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Keep Script References At The Bottom
Did you know that one browser can download only two components per hostname at one time? Thus, if you add the script references to the top, it will block everything that comes after it on the initial loading of a web page. This slows down the loading of a web page.
To avoid this situation, keep the javascript references below the HTML document, right before the closing of the <body> tag.
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Try To Keep Your Javascript And CSS In External Files
If you place JavaScript and CSS directly in the HTML document, they will be downloaded each time an HTML document is requested. Further, it will not benefit from browser caching which then increases the size of the HTML document and hence increases load time.
Therefore, always keep your CSS and JavaScript in external files. It is a good practice and will also make the website easier to maintain and update.
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Browser Caching – Improve website load speed
Browser caching improves and speeds up browsing. If you enable it on your browser and you download an asset, it will stay on your machine forever. Well, retrieving files from the secondary storage devices is faster than fetching them from a remote server, no matter how fast your internet connection.
- Reduce HTTP Requests
Whenever you visit a web page you must have seen that most of the page-loading time is spent downloading the components of that page (such as images, stylesheets, and scripts, etc).
By decreasing the number of requests that a web page makes to load the components, it will load faster. You can use CSS sprites to combine multiple images in order to reduce HTTP requests for images.
On the other hand, consider combining the multiple stylesheets and JavaScript too.
- Minimize 301 Redirects
It is advised to avoid using 301 redirects as every time it is used, it asks the browser to open a new URL that increases page loading time.
One should not ignore the web page speed metric if one is concerned about providing a better user experience. You need to note the current value and work hard to constantly improve it. If you use the above-mentioned tips, you will see a great difference not only in loading time but in traffic, conversions, and sales too. If you want more detailed information about reducing the website load time, you can consult with the experts. If you are interested to get in touch with a leading digital marketing company such as LeCiel Technologies you can visit the website online or call at 1-888-664-8126.
