In this digital world, the attention span of people is decreasing day by day. They don’t like to wait for what they want. 40% of people leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Obviously, people don’t wait and sit for several seconds to load a web page.
Let me explain it to you. If a user clicks through your webpage and it takes few seconds to load your page, the chances are that they’ll leave your page.
Fortunately, if you identify the reasons behind slow lead times, there’s a way to increase your page speed.
You can use tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights to pinpoint what’s wrong with your page.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights gives you a first set called field data. This includes various aspects of your website.
1. First Contentful Paint (FCP)
First contentful paint or FCP is when your browser displays the information, such as images (including background images), text, scalable vector graphics, and non-white canvas.
2. First Input Delay (FID)
It measures the response time of the site when a user first lands on it. For instance, if your user clicks to play a video, the time video takes is called FID.
3. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest contentful paint is a Google metric to measures the time it takes for the largest content on the page to load. LCP is used as a ranking factor for pages by Google
4. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is also a Google ranking factor. It’s an indication of improper coding and can be caused by ads, images, contact forms, videos, and fonts.
Using Lab Data to Increase Page Speed
The second set of elements is called lab data. It includes the elements above and total blocking time, time to interactive, and speed index.
1. Speed Index (SI)
The average time for all elements on a page to become visible is called speed index or SI. It is measured in milliseconds, and it calculates the time for images or videos to load.
2. Time to Interactive (TTI)
Time to Interactive or TTI is how much time it takes for the interactive elements on a page to load.
3. Total Blocking Time (TBT)
TBT measures the time between time to first contentful paint and the time a site becomes interactive.
Why should you Improve Page Speed?
User experience is affected by the page load speed; it can either make or break your website.
Faster page loading speed results in a better user experience and can grow page conversions & views while reduces bounce rate.
Eight Ways to Increase Your Page Speed
Go to Google PageSpeed Insights and check the speed of your website, as shown below.
It has a bar to enter a URL, and then it’ll take 1-2 minutes to analyze and check your website.
Now you’ll get a score like this.
This red sign shows a low score; these factors affect the final score,
- antivirus software
- Conducting A/B tests
- testing on different devices.
- Ads changing on your page
- internet traffic routing changes
- browser extensions that inject JavaScript.
Following actions can also increase your page speed:
- Resize and Optimize Images
Large or too many images can slow down your page load time. Make sure to compress your images and resize them.
The right format which is being supported by all the browsers is PNG and JPEG. So make sure to use these formats because they’re easily compressed.
Compressing means reducing the size of the image file and is represented in KBs and MBs.
Never use an image larger than 1 MB, and if you’re using high-quality images, they can be 60-80% resized.
- Trailing Slash
A forward slash placed at the end of a URL is called a trailing slash. Don’t forget to add it.
For instance, instead of www.forbes.com/contentmarketing, your URL should be like; https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescontentmarketing
- Limit Redirects
The more redirects you have, the longer it takes the server to find and load the correct page. Eliminate all the unnecessary redirects because more redirects mean the server will take more time to find and load the required page
4. Use a CDN
With a content delivery network, a network of different servers hosts your site locally to increase page load times. A user in Los Angeles accessing a website hosted in Toronto, for example, wouldn’t have to ping the server of origin but rather a closer one in Los Angeles.
When you spread out the content on multiple servers, it lowers the number of requests to the server of origin, which slows down page load times.
5. Limit Plugins
JavaScript, extra elements, and plugins increase your page load time. I
However, some plugins help to improve your site speed. For example,
- Plugins that resize images automatically,
- Minify code & defer JavaScript loading can help with page speed.
6. Minify Your HTML or CSS
Codes minification, you take out all the notes, spaces, and extra markup developers use to make their code readable and easier to work on down the road.
A server doesn’t need all that to read JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, and it can get in the way when it tries to load a page.
These tools can help you minify your websites:
- For JavaScipt: Google Closure Compiler
- For CSS: YUI Compressor from Yahoo
- For HTML: HTMLMinifier
- For CSS: Microsoft Ajax Minifier
7. Utilize Caching
If a site caches, the server saves copies of its web pages. So the site doesn’t have to start again every time it loads. You can reduce time by using caching.
8. Web Host Selection
For Web hosting, you get what you’ve paid.
Some low-cost packages cannot handle as much traffic, which automatically slows down the speed of your page.
Following are the 4 kinds of web hosting services you can choose from:
- Shared Hosting: It has a low cost and can slow down your site. In shared hosting, a single server hosts multiple small sites.
- VPS Hosting: A virtual private server, or VPS, hosts many sites, but each site has a virtual “spot” dedicated only to them. Because it’s virtual, it gives you more resources, potentially reducing the risk of site speed issues related to traffic.
- Dedicated Server Hosting: It’s an expensive server, but it doesn’t slow down the speed once you have more traffic. In a dedicated server, 1 site is hosted on a single server.
- Cloud Hosting: Websites are hosted on a network of physical and virtual servers that offer more flexibility & resources. For instance, If you suddenly get a boost in traffic, a virtual host will handle it.
To choose the best hosting service for your website, consider your budget and the sizes of your sit.
Now, let’s take a detailed look at the benefits of page speed.
1. User Experience
According to our research, 47% of consumers expect to load a webpage in less than 2 seconds.
Your audience doesn’t wait for your page to load and often bounce to find another website with a better user experience.
2. Page Views
You might have noticed that your page loads faster, the better views and ranking you may have on Google.
3. Conversions
If your pages load quickly, it will result in more conversions.
4. Bounce Rate
A report shows that if your page load time increases from 1-3 seconds, the bounce rate also increases by 32%.
Bottom Line
For a better user experience, the fast loading of a webpage is an essential component.
Also, for Google’s ranking algorithm and page views, loading speed has become vital.
First of all, you need to identify the common issues to improve your page speed. These issues can be large-sized images, or you’re using too many plugins.
Have you checked your site speed by Google’s PageSpeed Insights? Please share your common issues.
