If you’re looking at your website’s overall performance, page speed is one of the most important metrics you should pay attention to. No one wants to waste time on a page that loads very slowly, this is why good page loading speed is effective to reduce a site’s bounce rate.
A website well optimised for speed will both improve user experience and also boost the site’s chances of higher rankings from search engines.
In this blog post, you’ll learn about what page loading speed is and how you can improve it.
What is Page Loading Speed?
Page speed is the measurement of how fast your page loads once someone visits a page on your website.
Page loading speed is important if you want to retain more visitors on your site, you can even test and measure your page speed with tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom or GTmetrix.
Why Loading Speed is Important
Research has shown that when page loading time takes more than 3 seconds, the probability of a visitor leaving can increase by up to 32%. It can also move to about 90% if it takes more than 5 seconds to load.
Image Source: Think with Google
Page loading speed plays an important role in optimising content for SEO. It’s been identified by Google as an important ranking signal for both mobile and desktop searches.
Another important reason why loading speed is important to your site is the assurance it gives to customers. If your web pages take too long to load some visitors may begin to think it’s less credible and may not feel safe while using your site.
How loading speed affects user experience
You wouldn’t want to spend over 1 minute loading a page to access information or buy something in an eCommerce store, that’s how a slow page loading speed can negatively affect the user experience.
Things That Can Slow Down Page Speed
There a lot of things that can slow down page loading speeds, such as:
- The number of media files, like images and videos, contained on the page
- How many ads are displayed on the page
- The page script or specific coding
8 Ways To Improve Page Loading Speed
In this section, you’ll learn how you can improve your page loading speed to enjoy the advantages that come with it.
1. Use an Optimized Hosting System
Hosting systems are effective in the housing and maintenance of websites and they play a major role in how your website performs, this includes page speeds.
If you want your web pages to load faster then you must ensure that you use an optimised and efficient hosting provider. Most cheap web hosting services have poor performance and this could end up affecting your page loading speed.
You should use hosting platforms that don’t offer share hosting so you won’t have to worry about other websites draining from your website.
Examples of good hosting platforms are:
- Hostinger
- Bluehost
- Dreamhost
2. Web Page Caching
Caching is defined as the process of storing copies of files in a temporary storage location so that they can be accessed more easily.
Caching the web page in your browser is an effective way to improve page loading. It ensures you have copies of your site’s file so it takes less time to generate pages for a visitor.
If you cache your web pages will require your site server to use less resources to load a page. You can use a caching plugin like WordPress W3 Total Cache or let your web host handle it for you.
3. Compress Your Images
As you’ve read earlier, images are one of the things that can slow down page speed. This is why you need to compress your images if you want to improve your loading time to retain visitors.
Images can improve the appearance of your web pages and attract readers to your content, however large size images can cause delays in page loading time.
You can improve page loading speed by changing image file formats, enabling lazy loading and also by compressing the images.
4. Remove Unnecessary Plugins
Plugins are there to improve the functionality of a program, but if they are not well maintained, they can pose threats to websites.
It’s a great idea to minimize the number of plugins on your site and you can disable the plugins that you’re not currently using. You can review the plugins to see which are no longer relevant to your needs.
Plugins serve as valuable tools to enhance the functionality of a program or website. However, their utility comes with a caveat: when plugins are left unattended or not adequately maintained, they can transform from assets into liabilities, potentially compromising the security and stability of your website.
5. Reduce Your Redirects
Having too many redirects on your website can affect your page loading time. Every time a page redirects to another page on your website, it can elongate the request and response of the servers to show that page to the visitor.
Some redirects may be unnecessary, work on reducing when building internal links and backlinks, you can use tools like Screaming Frog to identify redirects and remove ones that are unimportant.
6. Use a Content Delivery Network
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers that work together to ensure fast delivery of content on the internet. It’ll work with the hosting system to distribute site files throughout the network.
Using a Delivery Network can help maximize website performance by loading content from the host’s servers to the visitor’s browsers. Here are some CDN tools you can use:
- Cloudflare CDN
- Google Cloud CDN
- Amazon AWS
7. Fix 404 Errors
404 errors can significantly harm how a website performs because it can negatively impact page loading speed and increase bounce rate.
Errors in loading web pages is something that drives site visitors away from such pages. Fix the errors in your web pages and then you can be sure your page loading speed will improve.
8. Enforce Lazy Loading for Ads
Lazy loading is a strategy that is used to identify resources that can be deferred until they are needed. Using this will displace the ad until the moment that the visitor is likely to see it.
It’s effective to improve user experience and can help to optimize page speed. Once you enforce this on your site, your ads can gain more views with the right audience and your web page can load faster.
Conclusion
Your webpage doesn’t have to load very slowly, most visitors would prefer to visit a page that loads with less time to one that takes forever to open.
Page loading speed is also very important if your site has to rank on search engines. These tips, when applied correctly, can help solve that problem and give your user’s better experience while using your site.
If you enjoyed reading this, you should read other blog posts we’ve curated for you. Our team of professionals are also available to help with SEO and email marketing services. Let’s know how we can help you.
