Website loading speed is a factor that a web design company in Columbus and webmasters has to consider. It is not just about increasing conversion rates; it can also help boost rankings in search engine results pages using Google’s page speed algorithm. This blog post will teach you how to improve web page load speeds and maximize your conversion rates using some simple methods for a Columbus web design company.
What is the web page load speed?
Web page load speed is the time it takes to load and display in the web browser.
Why should you increase the loading speed of your website?
There are many reasons why a webmaster and a web design agency in Columbus must consider web page load speeds, but here is a list of some:
- -Higher conversion rates (people stay on websites that load faster)
- -Better ranking with search engines like Google (loading times affect SEO rankings)
- -Improved user experience/satisfaction (users will not likely return if they have bad experiences with slow websites).
Ways to improve the loading speed of your website
The best way to optimize your site’s performance is by having a team consisting of members from various fields working together to decrease any problems that may be slowing down web page loading speeds.
- Minimize HTTP requests. You need to reduce the number of files that are being loaded. To do this, you should combine files into one file. There are web-based tools to help you with that, as the free online tool Minify.
- Minify and combine files. Another thing that will decrease load times is minifying CSS or JavaScript code – this can do this by using web-based tools (we recommend a popular website for both tasks, such as CSS minified).
- Use asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files. You need to ensure your website’s pages do not take too long to download all their content before they start appearing on users’ screens. This may happen when some of the scripts/files loaded continue running after being displayed on the screen, blocking other resources needed for displaying the web page.
- Defer JavaScript loading. A web page can be displayed while the web browser is still loading some of its scripts or style sheets (this process may take milliseconds). This technique, called deferring JavaScript, will ensure JS files are not blocking web pages from being shown to your visitors.
- Minimize time to first byte. Each web page starts by requesting data from web servers and the transfer speed is variable. You can do this by letting web servers deliver web page assets in parallel, which will decrease web browsers’ waiting time for a website to load.
- Minimize server response time. It may take some web pages a few seconds to completely load if they are hosted on slow servers or have huge sizes in bytes (especially images). This can be done through web server configuration, like web servers caching web page content, reducing web browsers’ waiting time for a website to load, and using CDN (Content Delivery Network).
- Select the right hosting company for your needs. Make sure that you use a reliable and professional web hosting service provider with the necessary resources (disk space, bandwidth) to support high traffic on your website at all times.
- Run a compression audit. Check the web server log files to find out if web browser caching is enabled. If compressing static content (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) is not allowed, will allow it.
- Enable compression on the web server side. The more you compress data before sending it over the network – e.g., when browsing a website, the faster that site loads for users as there is less data they need to download, which speeds up their overall experience online. Therefore, to do this on the web server side, enable compression.
- Enable browser caching. The web browser will cache the resources and use them later without requesting them again from your server – this is especially useful for images, style sheets, and scripts that don’t change with every visit to a website (e.g., font files).
- Reduce image sizes. Web pages usually contain images as it is one of the most popular ways to express yourself visually on the web. However, large-sized images can be an issue when loading web pages that are slow or hosted by underperforming hosting providers because large files take longer to transfer from servers. This means that if you reduce their file sizes, they will load faster than before-so; make sure you optimize them properly!
- Use a CDN. Content delivery networks (CDNs) are web servers that store website content from multiple web hosting companies on several web servers worldwide. This way, viewers access your web page quickly and deliver it to them much faster than a web server situated in one place only.
- Use external hosting platforms. Using an external web hosting platform reduces the load on your web server. If you opt for a VPS, then it will host all of your websites so that they are not hosted only on one web server!
- Optimize CSS delivery. When optimizing web page speed and increasing conversion rate, make sure to prioritize above-the-fold content with a lazy loading design technique, which means when users scroll down the website, images or other scripts are loaded immediately without waiting until their turn in line comes up.
- Prioritize above-the-fold content (lazy loading). For a Columbus web design company, lazy loading is a technique used to give web pages a faster-perceived loading time by deferring the retrieval of non-critical resources and rendering the visible part of the web page first.
Conclusion
Web page load speed is a crucial factor in web design Columbus, Ohio, and web development. It affects your web pages’ performance, user experience, and conversion rates. So, if you want to improve web page load time, then follow the tips we have presented here so that you can make it happen faster than ever before!