A +500ms decrease in website loading speed causes a -20% website traffic according to Google. Amazon reports a +100ms decrease in website loading speed causes -1% reduction in sales. These figures highlight the need for a faster more efficient way to load a website. Let’s look at some tips in this article.
In my previous article Create a blog, I discussed how anyone can set up a website from scratch using WordPress. Why is a website creation and optimization topic on this extra income website? Well, having a digital presence in this day and age is one way a person can earn a consistent income online.
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Back to the topic, the success of a website depends on speed and performance, content quality, and SEO (search engine optimization). The three factors are equally important. In this article, let’s focus on the first aspect – speed and performance.
Optimize Images
A website that loads a 200KB image will load faster compared to when loading a 2MB image. One of the easiest ways to improve website speed and performance is to optimize the images.
You can reduce the size of an image by either compressing or resizing it. Birme.net is a free online tool to do both. The website is simple, fast, and efficient. You can resize and compress bulk images at the same time. You can also choose the level of compression so you don’t get pixelated images. You can place image borders, rename multiple files, or download as zipped or individual files. It is also very user friendly.
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When saving an image, you can always save as JPEG instead of PNG to save some bytes. Good image size for a website is around 1000 to 2000 pixels width while maintaining the aspect ratio for the height. Small and medium images ideally are < 50kb and large images < 150kb when possible without losing too much quality. Use PNG only if you need images with transparent background.
If you are using WordPress, EWWW Image Optimizer, and Optimus – WordPress Image Optimizer are 2 plugins that can do the job well. Optimizing your images will decrease your website’s load time which in turn increases its performance score.
Check Performance
Before you can improve something, you first need to know where you are. Here are a few tools to check your overall website speed and performance.
Google PageSpeed – Google is every website owners’ best friend when it comes to online presence. You need to satisfy Google’s criteria if you want your website to be successful. To use PageSpeed, simply input your URL and it will automatically analyze the overall performance of your website. It will produce an analysis report so you can check which parts of your website needs improvement. If there’s any performance checking tool that you need to satisfy, it is this tool. Lighthouse is a Chrome extension from Google that measures also website performance.
Pingdom – is another popular tool to check the speed of your site. Input the URL and select the location of your target market. Pingdom generates a more “beginner-friendly” report you can use to speed up your site.
GTmetrix – is another tool you can use to check website performance. Check this article if you see varying results between PageSpeed, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.
Cache
Another way to improve website load time and performance is by caching. Caching means storage of temporary image and other files on the visitor’s computer. When they visit your website again, all the component of the website does not need to load again.
W3 Total Cache is a WordPress plugin that you can use to activate the caching of your website. Enabling all available settings will do the job well. You can also clear old cached files on your WordPress website with this plugin.
Minify
Eliminating unwanted spaces on your codes will help your website load and display pages faster by reducing its file size by up to 40-60%. The process is called Minification and is useful especially if you have thousands of lines of codes. You can do this with your HTML, CSS, and Javascript files. The only problem with this is once minified, it gets harder to edit. Check out MinifyCode to start minifying your files. If you are using WordPress, you can try Hummingbird plugin.
Updates
If you are using a WordPress theme, most probably you’ll have been prompted to update your PHP version. Keeping it up to date is one of the simplest and one of the most effective ways to increase the performance and security of your website for free. Check this article to see how to update your PHP version.
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