How to Make Your Website Load Faster

If you run a website or blog, you’ve undoubtedly felt the pain, horror and annoyance of waiting for a page to slowly load. Even worse than having to wait yourself is realizing that your visitors may be facing the same problem – which means you could lose traffic before you ever really get it. You could have the most gorgeous website with the best graphics around, but if it’s not loading, it’s not going to get you what you want.

Images: Make sure each of your images is only 65% of its size, not 100%. Large images can seriously slow down your site, but you don’t have to get rid of them right off the bat. Try reducing their size first. This is especially important if you have more than five images on one page.

Javascript: If you have Javascript in the HTML page, move it from the header to the footer.

Location: It sounds strange that in today’s modern world, location even matters. It does, though! If your web host is located far from where you live – like on the other side of the world – consider getting a new host that’s closer to home. This can affect your website loading time.

Quality: When it comes to web hosts, you get what you pay for. Beware of any free hosts or ones that cost just pennies – the less expensive hosts tend to be slower, too.

Scripts: If you have too many scripts or multiple style sheets, your website could be running extra slow. Hire a professional to combine all the scripts into one script sheet. You also many need to put all CSS onto one style sheet.

Simplicity: Part of the problem could be too many large images and widgets on your page. If too much is going on, trimming down each page’s content could help the entire website to load faster. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a rich website, just that you shouldn’t clog it up with unnecessary components. There a different sites online where you can run a a page speed test in order to find out how long each element on the page takes to load.

Theme: If you’re using a host with standard themes, like Weebly or WordPress, the theme itself could be the problem. While it’s a bit time consuming to change themes, it may be necessary. First, though, hunt around in forums to see if other people are experiencing the same issues with that specific theme.

Testing for Website Speed and Server Response Time

Visiting a website generally consists of two steps. The web browser that the user accesses the website from requests the website files from the server that they are hosted on. The web server then responds to the request, and the browser displays the website. The time that takes place between these two simple steps is what is known as “response time.”

Generally, when it takes a long time for a browser to display a website, there are two factors that could be contributing to the delay. These factors are the website’s lack of optimization for speed, and/or the server’s limited capabilities. It’s a good idea to make sure both are taken care of in order to ensure quick load times.

Optimizing a Website for Speed

The first step in optimizing your website’s load time is to identify exactly what is making your site slow. Maybe the design you’re using is too bulky, or you depend too heavily on third-party content and widgets. Whatever the case may be, there are many factors that can majorly bottleneck a website’s load time. These are a few tips for optimizing it.

Start by assessing your website with a site like WebPagetest.org to see where your specific problem areas lie. There are also other sites online where you can run a website speed test. From there, check your image file sizes, use CSS sprites to combine CSS coding, cut down on coding in general, and using gZip on your server to compress your website.

Optimizing a Server for Speed

The second step in getting quicker load times is to optimize your server for speed. There are several culprits that can dramatically increase how long it takes to load your website, and they are how much traffic your website is getting, how resource-intensive it is, what software your server is running, and what type of web hosting your subscribed to.

To improve circumstances on your server’s end, you should always go for the most flexible package possible if you are a hosting customer. Dedicated hosting is one of the most powerful types of hosting available, simply because it leaves all of the server’s resources free for handling your website alone. Be sure to use quality server hosting software on a dedicated server, and pair it with a generous amount of bandwidth. Doing just these three things should decrease server response time in no time.