Page speed is an important factor when it comes to a website’s performance. There’s a whole lot that goes into page speed, and it can be a confusing topic to understand sometimes. It’s essential, however, that your site loads quickly to increase visitor engagement and reduce your bounce rate, which is a fancy term for the percentage of people who visit your site and leave without taking any further action or clicking to any other pages.
Page speed is not to be confused with website speed. Website speed is the average speed of several pages on a website. Page speed, on the other hand, is a measure of how quickly your content loads when someone visits a specific page on your website. This can all be a lot to take in, but at Clearbridge Branding, we have the answers. Check out our tips and tricks on improving page speed below.
Compress and Optimize Images
The images on your website are a type of double-edged sword. On the one hand, they vastly improve the quality and appearance of your website and its content. However, large images can slow things down and delay loading times. To avoid this, change file formats, enable lazy loading (the practice of deferring the loading of an image until it’s needed), and compress your pictures. If you’re using WordPress, plugins such as WP Smush work great, and if not, sites like tinypng.com or Attrock will get the job done.
Reduce Redirects to Improve Page Speed
A redirect is a webserver function that sends a site user from one URL to another. You only want to use this sparing and in cases where it’s necessary. An example of this would be if you’re moving to a new domain and you aren’t sure if users know where to find your new site yet. Too many of them, though, can greatly slow down your site and hurt loading times. When building internal links and menus on WordPress, avoid creating unnecessary redirects that will both slow your page down and confuse visitors with too many URLs.
Cache Your Page
Caching is the practice of storing copies of your page’s files, which minimizes the workload on the server needed to generate and load your site to a visitor. This is one of the best and most effective ways to improve page speed, as your server requires fewer resources to fully load. There are WordPress plugins such as W3 Total Cache that will do this for you automatically after it is enabled (which you must manually do by going to General Settings > Page Cache > Enable), and there are many other hosts that can handle it automatically as well.
Use A Content Delivery Network to Improve Page Speed
A content delivery network, also referred to as a content distribution network (CDN), is a network of servers that can improve page speed. How does it work? A CDN hosts and distributes copies of your site’s static content from servers that are located all across the world. It doesn’t replace your primary host but rather works with that server to deliver copies of your site’s files to strategically chosen data centers. By distributing content using a nearby CDN, website users will experience much faster page speed.
In Closing
Improving page speed is crucial in making sure your website is the best version of itself and that your visitors get the very best experience possible. There are so many factors that go into how fast a website loads, many of which are technical concepts rooted in programming or web design.
Still not sure about how you can enhance the speed of your web pages? That’s what we’re here for! Contact our experts at Clearbridge Branding Agency to maximize the potential of your site and give your audience something they won’t forget (and won’t forget to return to).
