When someone visits your website, you have only a few seconds to capture their attention. If your site is slow and visitors can’t immediately find what they want, they’ll leave. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a high-functioning site that allows users to log on and instantly gather information. A major component of a positive user experience is PageSpeed: can they access your site immediately?
Here are some tips to help you increase your pagespeed and improve user response.
Focus on your homepage pagespeed
Your homepage is often your first opportunity to capture a visitor’s attention, making it essential for converting browsers into buyers. Here are some simple tips for increasing your homepage speed:
- Limit the number of posts per page. We recommend not exceeding seven posts per page.
- Display your posts as excerpts rather than full-length articles.
- Remove any inactive plugins or widgets.
- Eliminate any non-essential widgets from your homepage.
An important part of increasing your pagespeed is continually testing it. You can do this with Google’s Search Console, which is free to access. This diagnostics tool shows you which aspects need improvement and which are already meeting standards for both desktop and mobile versions of your website.
By focusing your energy on the aspects that fail the diagnostics test, you can expedite the time it takes visitors to access your homepage. It should also shorten the time it takes them to navigate from your homepage to the rest of your site.
Choose a trustworthy host
Hosting sites make all kinds of promises, but not all can keep them. The more sites your host manages, the greater the chance your website will have lower speed and higher risk of downtime.
When choosing a host, do your research first. Determine when they last made updates, and read as many reviews as possible. The more you know about your host, the better. Find one that is trusted so you can ease your mind and keep your website on a steady track.
Optimize your database
If you run an online business, you likely have a database that stores all your website information. It’s incredibly important to maintain this database regularly to avoid impeding your site speed.
One simple step for optimizing your database is to add an index. An index helps your database sort through and locate information faster, narrowing its search focus instead of randomly scanning through each record.
Implement caching on your website
When someone logs on to your webpage, their browser requests permission from the server to view images, texts, etc. These elements then get stored in their browser’s cache. This means that as they browse through the rest of your website, certain things are automatically stored and don’t need to be re-downloaded with each page transfer.
For example, if your header is the same for multiple pages, the image will automatically appear when the user enters the new page rather than having to reload it. This memory saves visitors time and allows them to access your page without waiting for another item to download.
To manage caching on your website, we recommend using the W3 Total Cache Plugin for WordPress sites.
Optimize your images
Ensure your images aren’t oversized. Large images strain your download time, forcing visitors to wait. One simple solution is to shrink their size. Compressing your image’s size means less data for the browser to store and retrieve. Ideal file formats are .svg and .webp.
Before including an image, ask yourself if it is integral to the design of your webpage. If not, it may be wise to omit it.
When optimizing your image, consider:
- Format capabilities
- Quality
- Content of encoded data
- Pixel dimensions
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