Research from Google shows that people will leave a mobile webpage if it takes more than three seconds to load.
Three seconds may sound like an incredibly short amount of time. But in the world of website speeds, it isn’t.
If you want to stay competitive, Google says your pages should load in two seconds or less. Any slower than that and potential customers will leave your website left and right.
Your page loading times also affect how well your website ranks. It’s a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile websites. If you have slow website speeds, you’ll not only have a high bounce rate — you’ll get less traffic too.
If you want to increase your traffic and sales, then you’ll definitely need to improve your page loading times and overall website speed.
Here are some tips to help you build the fastest website around.
How to improve your website’s speed
1. Choose the right hosting solution
The hosting plan you choose can have a big impact on your page speeds.
VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting, but it’s usually a lot faster.
Because page and website speed play such a key role in attracting visitors to your website and keeping them on it, it’s usually worth it to splash out for VPS.
You should also make sure you choose a reputable web host that’s based in the same country as most of your website visitors.
If your website is hosted in the US and someone tries to reach it from New Zealand, the request will have to travel a long distance, which takes time.
Choosing a web host that’s in the same country as your visitors eliminates that extra wait time, leading to faster website speeds.
One last factor you should consider when choosing a web host is DNS response times. If your web host has slow DNS response times, it’ll slow down your whole website.
2. Optimize your media files
According to Digital Doughnut, the one thing that can really slow your websites down is large media files.
It’s easy to forget to check the file size of videos and images. But if you want to achieve consistent, fast load times, one of the best things you can do is optimize your videos and photos before you upload them.
You should compress the image files into the smallest size they can be without sacrificing quality.
You should also make your videos a smaller size. Ideally, though, you should avoid uploading videos to your website and embed them instead.
3. Don’t overuse plugins
The more plugins you have, the slower your website will be.
Plugins can improve your site’s user experience, so they’re definitely worth using. But you have to strike the right balance between too many plugins and not enough.
Make sure that every plugin you download serves a real purpose and comes from a reputable developer.
Install one plugin at a time so you can see how it affects website speed. If you notice that it’s slowing your website down, you may want to uninstall it.
4. Use tools to improve your website’s speed
You can use tools like PageSpeed Insights to get suggestions on how to optimize your website.
You can also use tools like Dareboost to compare your website’s speed to your competitors. This gives you an idea of how much you need to improve your load times.
Improving your website’s speed is one of the best things you can do for your business. It will help you attract more customers and keep them on your site for longer, which with any luck will result in more sales.