How to Increase Your Website Speed
What is Website Speed?
Website speed or website performance refers to how quickly a browser is able to load web pages from a given website. Essentially, how quickly can web pages download from a hosting server and display onto the web browser. In order to find out what your page speed is, use Page Speed Insights.
Why is Website Speed Important?
The amount of time it takes for your website to load could be the difference between generating a lead or losing one. According to BBC, 50% of people won’t wait for a website to load if it takes more than 3 seconds. That means you’re losing about 50% of visitors who could have made a purchase on your eCommerce website.
In addition, your page speed performance directly affects your SEO rankings. Google accounts for several factors when ranking your website, including bounce rate, the amount of time a visitor spends on your page, the number of visitors who make a conversion on your website, page speed, and more. So how fast should your website load in order to rank high in the eyes of Google? SEM Rush provides a glimpse into the web’s averages:
- If your website loads in 5 seconds, it’s faster than ~25% of the web
- If your website loads in 2.9 seconds, it’s faster than ~50% of the web
- If you website loads in 1.7 seconds, it’s faster than ~75% of the web
- If you website loads in 0.8 seconds, it’s faster than ~94% of the web
How to Increase Your Website Speed
There are a number of things you can do to increase website speed and improve your website’s overall performance:
- Reduce Redirects
- Combine and Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files
- Enable Browser Caching
- Improve Server Response Time
- Use a Content Distribution Network (CDN)
CDN’s are network servers that are used to distribute the load of delivering content - Optimize your Images
Ensure your images are in the correct file format: PNGs are best for graphics while JPEGs are better for photographs
Need help improving your eCommerce website speed? Contact Bytes.co for help. By migrating websites onto our servers and optimizing hundreds of websites improve their site speed and performance.
