Website performance and speed is paramount in today’s time, especially given the fact that there are a number of websites that a person can get the same information. User is getting accustomed to instant updates without having to wait a lot. With such expectations of user experience, a lot of emphasis is being laid on the speed of the website, and even fraction of a second can also make a lot of difference to the number of hits a website gets, and eventually how may conversions a website records. There is an increasing number of researches and studies which point out to the fact that more and more people are now understanding the importance of these metrics.
However, one cannot expect to get everything in a website. A fast website comes with its share of shortcomings. Thus, the web development company has to decide what is most important for the website, and accordingly can prioritise different aspects. One needs to get rid of the unnecessary elements on a website that are making the website slow, and also not improving the user experience – the most important among these is any form of media.
Here are some strategies that one can use to one-up the performance of a website.
Keep the speed and interface of the website suitable for mobile
Mobile web has become increasingly popular and thus it is imperative for one to understand its importance and keep the product suitable for mobile viewing. In order to make the website of mobile-first quality and speed, you can take a mobile-friendly test for assessment of the website. You can then optimise the UI and UX of the website as per mobile devices. This is an integral part of website development.
Reduce size of image
Sources have confirmed that more than 60% of the size of an average website’s weight on desktop is images. Thus, the images have to be sized accordingly. The image size can be considerably reduced by adopting different formats for images like WebP and JPEG XR. This will decrease the size of the images, but will not hamper the quality of the image.
Considering trying out a CDN
A CDN or Content Delivery Network is a system that delivers websites and other forms of web content with the help of distributed servers. Basically, the networks takes the static files of the website such as CSS, images, and JavaScript. It then delivers the files from a server that is in more proximity to the user’s physical location. As the distance decreases, the load time also decreases and the performance of the website is better.
Maximum cache leads to better performance
Caching is a very important practice in web development, which people often tend to ignore. In this process, web pages are temporarily stored so that the bandwidth of the website is reduced and performance is improved in turn. Once there’s a visitor is on the website, the cached version of the website is served, except in the case when the website has changed since the last cache. This saves a lot of load time of the website pages and increases the speed of the website overall. Make sure to ask your web development company in India as well as abroad to incorporate this feature on the website.
Reduce the number of HTTP requests
Essentially, HTTP is a protocol for request/response which is used by web browsers in order to retract files from the web server. There are a number of methods to reduce the number of HTTP requests and the web development company should be adept to make sure that the number of requests is as low as possible.
Check your hosting plan
As important as the points mentioned above is to make sure that the hosting provider is giving result-oriented services. Sometimes, even if the website is made keeping in the mind the speed and performance, hosting plays a big role in bringing down the performance. If the web hosting is being shared with a number of other websites and the particular website required a size-able hosting storage, there will be noticeable lag on the website. In such cases, it is suggested to have a dedicated server for hosting.
