Whether you run a blog, an e-commerce website, or a web admin for an organization, knowing the best practices for page speed is essential to your site performing at its best. This includes monitoring your website’s performance, optimizing your coding, and using Lazy Loading, Caching, and Minification.
Lazy loading
Using lazy loading on your page can be a terrific approach to better user experience, following best page speed practices, and improving SEO.. However, knowing how to implement this strategy correctly is essential because it can accidentally ruin your user’s experience.
The most obvious way to do this is to load images in advance. You can reduce the number of HTTP requests by loading a photo in advance. This also decreases the overall cost of loading your website.
Another method of lazy loading images is using a loading attribute. Utilizing a loading attribute, an image will automatically load when the user scrolls to it. This can save you a lot of time and bandwidth.
Lazy loading of your images is also a great way to improve user experience. By loading a photo in advance, your user will be able to see a more transparent version of the image when it’s ready to view.
Minification
Using minification on your website is a great way to speed up your page load time. It also helps you to improve your search engine rankings. Minification removes space, unnecessary characters, and delimiters from your code.
Minification can reduce the size of your website files. This will save you time and bandwidth. You will also improve your website’s performance. You can minify your CSS or JavaScript files using a caching plugin, online tools, or manual methods.
Minification is a simple process. During the procedure, a webserver processes the code on your site. It then creates a smaller version of your website’s files and stores them on a CDN server. This reduces the number of HTTP requests your site makes.
The best way to minify your website’s code is to use a minification plugin. The plugin works in the background and allows you to select the file you want to minify.
Caching
Getting the best page speed means using some techniques to optimize your website. One of these techniques is caching. This will speed up the load time of your website and boost your rankings in search engines.
Caching is a process by which a browser stores a copy of a web page or a set of web pages on a local hard drive. This saves the web server the trouble of having to download it again. A cached page can reduce your server load by up to 80%.
Caching is also a great way to reduce your server’s bandwidth. However, fetching something over the network can be expensive. When a web browser retrieves data from a cached page, the browser only needs to download a small amount of data.
Optimizing your website’s coding
Having a fast page loading time is crucial for your website’s performance. This can lead to a higher conversion rate and better leads. It can also make your website’s visitor experience smoother.
The first step in website performance optimization is writing clean code. This means removing any unused characters and formatting. Also, minify your code to make it faster to load. If you need help with how to do this, there are a few tools you can use.
If your website has inline JavaScript codes, you should also optimize them. This includes removing any formatting or comments that are unused. You can also use the Lazysizes plugin to optimize your critical render path. This will make sure your most important images are prioritized over less important ones.
Monitoring your website’s performance
Website speed tools can help you measure and optimize your website’s performance. This information will help reduce your website’s bounce rate, increase conversions and improve sales.
When your website is slow, visitors will get frustrated and leave your website. This isn’t nice for your brand but can also cost you money. In 2018, Google recommended 3 seconds or less page load time. When a page takes more than four seconds to load, one in four visitors will abandon the site. That’s $1.6 billion lost annually.
A high-performing website has a great user experience. It creates an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral connection with your users. The more satisfied and engaged your users are, the more likely they will return and recommend your website to others.
