At present, we are enjoying an era of superior page speed optimization, with copious information being shared and easier implementation than in the past.
And why should you care?
The huge effect of optimizing page speed on businesses is substantial. Recent statistics are indicating that if you make the loading time for a page come down to 2.4 seconds from 5.7 seconds, the chances of having a higher conversion rate increases by threefold.
Would a three-fold increase in revenue from your website be appealing for major companies with aggressive goals? Of course, it does!
Run the tool from Google on your homepage to check what effect website speed optimization could have for your website. Once it has looked over your web page, there is a convenient tool to consider rival sites and an income forecasting tool estimating what the potential financial boost would be if the speed was quickened.
If you’ve already employed methods to significantly optimize the speed of your website (including but not limited to Gzip compression, browser caching, and high-quality hosting provider), and you’re looking for additional methods for improving it, then you are in the correct spot.
I am going to demonstrate additional methods of benefiting from optimization of webpage speed beyond what is expected, particularly concentrating on enhancing the user experience based on performance and the key stage of loading content.
Why is website loading time important?
There are multiple reasons why a fast load time is very important:
1. Google believes that when loading times are too long, the number of visitors who leave the page without interacting with it will be higher. It is shown that a mere 5 second increase in the loading time of a page can result in a bouncerate of 106%. As a result, it is now classified as one of the Crucial Web Vitals, with regards to performance.
2. Google and other search engines prioritise websites which provide a pleasant user experience when ranking them. This is the explanation for why Google has adopted page speed as a foundational element of the Core Web Vitals. Consequently, the quicker your site can be accessed, the more probable it is to be ranked highly.
3. According to this study, if the load time is even a second later, conversions may decrease by as much as 7%. This shows the importance of Conversion Rate Optimization. If you do not take care, a tiny delay of a single second in loading time for an e-commerce store with a daily income of 1,000 euros could cause a daily decrease of 70 euros, equivalent to 2,100 euros lost in a full month. If you figure out the annual cost, a low page speed can really hurt your profits.
4. Websites with a slow loading time take longer to be crawled, and they are not as intensively assessed since the Googlebot only has a limited amount of time to spend crawling them. Having a quicker loading time can result in your website being crawled more frequently, meaning the data from your site saved in Google’s index will be more accurate.
What are user-centric performance metrics?
Our primary attention will be given to the measurements found in both the updated PageSpeed Insights application and Google’s Lighthouse utility.
And what is the critical rendering path you may ask?
The procedure that a browser follows to construct and show the elements of a web page is called the critical rendering path.
It’s essential that your attention is placed on the vital rendering path when you are evaluating website speed optimization. If you’re only paying attention to page loading performance rather than user-experience metrics tracked by applications such as Lighthouse, then you have the wrong approach!
If the loading time of the page is around six seconds but the user can start using it immediately after one second, it’s not a bad result.
It is not a good experience for the user if the page loading time is six seconds, yet they are not able to see content or interact with the page until five seconds have elapsed.
That’s an extremely unusual comparison, but you understand what I mean. You are concentrating on how fast the user believes the page is taking to load, which is the most vital aspect from the user’s point of view.
Here are some suggestions on how to make your webpages load faster.
1. File Optimization
Remove Render-Blocking Files
One of the greatest ways to upgrade the paramount critical rendering path and significant measurements like the First Contentful Paint (FCP) is to get rid of render-blocking documents. If there is something you would like to make better, make this your top priority!
What does render-blocking mean?
Delaying the display of content for the user, render blocking is what happens when external JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets hinder the browser from completing the interpretation of HTML and allowing the user to view the page.
Once a web browser comes across casing and JavaScript files that have been externally joined to the HTML, it will pause analyzing the HTML and instead start retrieving, welcoming, downloading, and then breaking down those files. Until the files have been acquired and gone through, the page will stay empty.
This can result in a significant amount of waiting time, particularly when the CSS or JS documents are bigger in size.
There are three important steps to fixing this below:
1. Inline Critical CSS
The initial move to address this issue is to insert any essential CSS into the head area of the webpage. It is likely that you understand that the CSS needed to render the information visible before scrolling down is known as critical CSS.
When this CSS is inserted directly into the beginning of the of the page, the browser will interpret it and use it with all of the HTML elements it finds until it gets to a file that impedes the page rendering.
2. Defer Non-critical CSS
We need to hold off on loading any CSS that isn’t necessary for displaying the content in the part of the web page visible without scrolling once we have the critical CSS loaded.
To accomplish this, you must utilize the rel=preload attribute to add CSS files in an unusual manner, as demonstrated below.
3. Defer Non-critical JS
We need to repair any JavaScript that is obstructing the browser from displaying the content.
If a JS file is necessary for the page to load quickly, you could embed it inside the HTML like you did for the vital CSS.
2. Use a CDN for global reach
If it is crucial for your internet business to have an international presence, you will soon discover that the speed of connection can differ significantly depending on the place from which the webpage is being accessed. This is because the nodes spread out in locations closer and closer to where the web server of your data center is.
A Content Delivery System, abbreviated as CDN, is able to be of assistance in this case. A CDN makes sure that your website is held in an extensive server system around the world, so that there is a limited amount of intermediaries between a user’s device and the following server within the CDN. This service is linked with great expenditures, which may not be worth it for websites mostly targeting the German-speaking area.
To take advantage of a CDN, you must sign up with a supplier. Cloudflare offers some packages that are at no cost to you, yet it is wise to verify the specifics of these free offers. The providers who charge a fee usually bill according to the amount of data transferred over the network in a given month.
Known providers are:
3. Detect bottlenecks in the infrastructure
When a web page takes a long time to come up, it could be because the server and its related systems have too much going on. This could be due to a variety of factors, such as a mistake on the part of the hosting provider, or an overload of requests on the web server.
It is essential to detect these points of congestion so as to respond promptly. Many hosting solutions offer metrics to monitor server utilization. The Ryte platform offers the capability of measuring the “Time to First Byte” as part of its Web Performance feature, and this figure can be helpful in assessing the data collected. If the amount goes up dramatically, there could be an issue with the web server.
4. Use GZip compression
Small files are the most efficient when it comes to processing and sending. This is likewise valid for the code that is responsible for showing the website in the browser of the user. This code can be shrunk down in size by compressing it, similar to a zip file. The compressed data is then unpacked in the browser.
This method was met with doubt for an extensive period, as it requires computing power from the web server, which is also a lengthy process. Despite the negatives, the pros outweigh them, making it worthwhile to implement.
How can I compress files with gzip?
Most websites use Apache server, so the following example is for Apache.
Two different modules are used: mod_deflate and mod_gzip.
1. The mod_deflate module is usually pre-installed. With the following console command you can check if it already exists:
sudo apachectl -t -D DUMP_MODULES | grep deflate
If you receive the notification “deflate_module (shared)”, then it confirms that mod_deflate has been installed. Otherwise contact your host.
2. Now open “httpd.conf”, the Apache configuration file. You can usually find it in the folder “/etc/httpd/conf/”. There you add the following line:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript
This shows that GZip is being used to reduce the size of the written material along with the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. Save the file and restart the Apache web server. Beginning immediately, Apache will be performing the task of compressing the data.
5. Enable HTTP/2
By default, everything that is on a web page (including photos and scripts) is downloaded using the HTTP/1.1 protocol. The files are consecutively downloaded with a distinct connection.
This slows down the loading process. By setting up an SSL certificate, the web server can be converted to use the HTTP/2 protocol. Using HTTP/2, all documents can be retrieved with just one link. They are also prioritized. Every popular web browser is compatible with the protocol, so you can confidently use it.
6. Compress images
The majority of the amount of data downloaded from a website is composed of images. It is particularly true for e-commerce sites with numerous merchandise and websites for portfolios, particularly those of photographers.
If you are able to shrink the size of your images considerably, it can have the effect of vastly improving your page load time. We have crafted an extensive piece dealing with compression of images on Ryte.
7. Distinguish between desktop and mobile sites
Predictions suggest that more than half of all users will utilize mobile devices as opposed to desktops to gain access to websites in the near future. The requirements for visuals vary greatly between the two platforms. Desktop computers typically offer solid connection to the web, and those with large, HD displays require the highest quality and resolution visuals.
Websites accessed on mobile devices usually do not have the highest internet speed since they are typically used while people are out and about. The size of the display necessitates less stringent requirements for quality.
Additionally, because of the screen size, images are shown at a different resolution than on a computer. It is sensible to separate the different output media, and to generate two versions of an image.
Switches can also be included in the website’s code in order to achieve the same result as the preceding illustration for WebP. Using CSS, it is possible to check the resolution of the screen and alter the display accordingly to be suited for the output device.
Summary
I hope that after reading the advice, you can utilize it on your website to make it run faster and increase your conversion rates. After you have executed the fundamentals and some of the suggestions above, you should observe much faster speeds. However, there are plenty of more tactics to increase site velocity.
