Getting your website to run fast and smooth is a top priority. Consider that website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42 percent with each additional second of load time. Plus, nearly 70 percent of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.
It’s clear that the speed of your website has a significant impact on how consumers perceive your brand, and how likely they are to become a customer of yours. So, if your website isn’t as fast as it should be, there are certain steps you’ll want to take. Let’s cover them below.
1. Run a Speed Test
Before you do anything, run a speed test using a tool like PageSpeed Insights. This will allow you to analyze the performance of your pages. While there are others out there, we like PageSpeed Insights because it’s fast, free and straightforward.
2. Get Better Web Hosting
The next step is to look into your web hosting provider. No matter how hard you try to deliver the best results, your website can only be as good as its hosting provider. Cheap hosting might save you money, but it will drag down your website and kill your conversions.
3. Implement a CDN Service
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) allows you to have your website hosted on several servers across the globe. This way, each individual who loads your website will have their content loaded from the nearest server depending on their location.
4. Minify CSS and JavaScript Files
Websites use CSS and JavaScript to look nice and benefit users. However, lines of code can make these files big, slowing down your site. Minifying code removes white spaces, extra lines and characters to keep the code clean.
5. Enable Browser Caching
When you enable browser caching, you allow content to be stored in people’s browsers. The next time they visit your website, they don’t have to download all of the files from the server again. They’ll be stored in their browser for faster load times.
6. Choose Optimized Themes
Templates and themes rely on code to work. Choose your themes and templates wisely, as you want to choose one that looks good and loads quickly. Some of our favorites include Hello Elementor and Astra.
7. Optimize All Images
Images can slow down your site significantly, so you want to make sure that they are properly optimized. If you only need to optimize a couple of images, you can use a tool like TinyPNG. If you have a lot of images to work on, you’ll find it easier to use a plugin like ShortPixel Image Optimizer.
These are a few of the things you can do to enhance your website’s speed. To discuss more ways to improve your website, contact WSI Internet Partners. A fast, optimized website is the key to success, so learn how to improve your site today!