How long will you wait for a website to load before feeling annoyed? Not that long really. What is true for you is also true for your customers and their expectations regarding your services, which are represented by your website. Countless studies have already demonstrated that a website's load time can significantly impact the way in which users perceive a brand and its products or services. That's why you need to make sure that your website is fast enough for your customers – here are top industry tips on improving the load time and conversion rate of your website.
What Do You Gain By Speeding Up?
Every second of load time is valuable. First of all, you must realize that 83% of users expect a website to load in 3 seconds or less. A longer load time will simply discourage them from visiting your website and making an order, thus affecting your conversion rate. In a recent infographic, WebpageFX showed how just a 1 second improvement in page load time can lead to a smashing, 7% increase in conversion rate.
Remember that there are plenty of tools scattered around the web to help you measure your page load and limit it to the minimum. One fine resource is Google's PageSpeed Tools – check it and see how the speeding up processes can be automated.
How to reduce the load time of your website and improve its conversion rate? Follow the guidelines below.
Reduce HTTP Requests
Most load time is spent on loading website elements, such as scripts, Flash, images or style-sheets. For every website component, the browser needs to make an HTTP request – as you might guess, the more things adorn your page, the more requests will be made, significantly prolonging the load time.
That's why you should do everything to reduce the number of components. Use CSS for compiling styles, combine various elements into one, reduce scripts and locate them on the bottom of a page or streamline the overall number of page elements.
Optimize Images
Optimizing your images is another great strategy to reducing the load time. In general, try to keep them as small as you can – crop the photos, get rid of the comments and edit your pictures in such a way as to make them lighter.
Formats to avoid: BMP and TIFF. Instead, choose JPG, PNG, and GIF (for just small graphics). Remember to include the scr attribute in your code – without a source, the browser will still make a request and then take a lot of time to load whatever you put there.
Plugin Issues
If you're using too many plugins, things can become difficult – they prolong load time, cause security troubles and sometimes crash. Use plugins that are really a must. Remove those you don't need and test the indispensable ones – disable them and test server performance to see whether they affect the load time of your page. If they do, look for alternatives – load time is your priority.
Compress
What to do with a large page? Compress it! Use Gzip to limit the bandwidth of your page and reduce the HTTP responses. Nearly all web browsers support Gzip format and can help in speeding up your site.