Did you know that you could be losing thousands and thousands of visits to your website because your website does not load fast enough? You are right. A few extra seconds can cost you a huge bill.
It sure is something you can't afford. What good is all the work you put into your website if it turns out that people leave right at the door because they have tired of waiting for you to open it?
To remedy it, in this article I am going to show you how to check if your website approves or fails in loading speed and what you should take into account to get it to load faster.
Why is it so important to improve Page Speed
Loading speed is critical to the user experience .
And if it is important for the user, it is also important for Google and positioning .
How important is it?
A lot! So much so that every millisecond counts .
Think about it. Our patience as users when we want to access a website at this point is minimal, especially if we are using a mobile device.
What happens when we consider that a website takes too long to load?
That we go directly, surely not to return, and we look for another option.
Can you imagine that very high bounce rate on your website?
The amount of visits, money and conversions that you can be losing for a few seconds too much?
Well, to give you an idea, 47% of users expect a website to take 2 seconds or less to load while 40% do not hesitate to abandon a website with a loading time of more than 3 seconds.
The loading speed is, at the same time, increasingly determining for positioning.
Especially with the massive use of the Internet from devices, which has already led Google to prioritize the mobile versions in its search results (Mobile First Indexing).
Along these lines, Google itself has already announced that mobile loading speed will be a factor that directly affects the ranking of websites.
If every thousandth of a second counts, even more so on mobile devices. According to a study by Google , the probability of bouncing on a website increases dramatically with each extra second:
What does this mean? Well, yes or yes, you should start to detect what are those factors or elements that may be affecting the loading speed of your website and remedy them as soon as possible.
Tools to measure charging time
To start, what you should do is check the loading speed of your website to see if it approves or fails.
To do this, you can use several free tools , which will also provide you with indications about what is wrong and make recommendations about it.To obtain more real results, I recommend that you perform the tests in incognito mode in your browser.
Page Speed Insights
Page Speed Insights is a Google tool that analyzes your website and gives you a score from 0 to 100 in both desktop and mobile versions.
The closer to 100 the better. Above 80 , you already have the approved.
You just have to enter the URL and it will give you the results in a few seconds.
The tool will also provide you with a series of indications and recommendations. Do not settle for the approved, if it is your case. Keep these recommendations in mind and improve what you have to improve.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix is a tool that analyzes your website by simultaneously performing the speed and performance tests of Google PageSpeed and the Yslow Firefox extension.
You just need to enter your URL and in a few seconds it will provide you with a diagnosis.
Likewise, it will provide you with a comprehensive report of suggestions for improvement in order of priority.
Pingdom
Pingdom allows you to test your website from different regions of the world.
As in the previous cases, you just have to enter the URL to receive the results report and the recommendations for improvement with their corresponding score and priority.
WebPageTest
WebPageTest allows you to choose the location and type of browser to analyze the loading time of your website. In addition, in each speed test, perform three tests, so you can obtain an average
With these tools you have more than enough to check if your website needs to improve its loading speed and to know what is mainly failing.
Tips for your website to load faster
Next, we are going to see what are those factors that you must take into account when optimizing the loading speed of your website so that it adapts to the demands of users and Google.
1.- Choose a good hosting
It won't do you much good to have an optimized website if the hosting is not up to par in terms of stability and response time. This is why, yes or yes, you should choose a quality hosting. And, yes, quality pays.
However, for about 5 euros per month you can perfectly have quality hosting that meets the needs of your website and does not leave you lying down. Only good hosting will give you the guarantees you need.
In case you are interested, we recently did a super complete technical study to determine what was the best cheap hosting for WordPress..
2.- Choose a lightweight and optimized theme
Did you know that 77% of the best-selling WordPress themes suspend loading speed on desktop and up to 96% on mobile? Amazing, but true.
Many templates, especially those that offer more design and customization options, contain native errors related to excessive code, short codes, mandatory plugins, images, etc.
All this, in the end, ends up taking its toll on the performance and loading speed of your website, regardless of the aesthetic theme being what you were looking for.
This is why we choose Publisher Theme , the only WordPress theme optimized for SEO and without an extra line of code, to favor loading speed, positioning and user experience.
With the right settings, Publisher Theme can help your website load like a bullet. And it's not that I say it, that too. There are many people who have already been able to verify it.
I leave it there. But what I do recommend is that, when choosing a theme, do not look only at the aesthetic part and check in advance to what extent it is optimized or not.
The more you take advantage of the native WordPress functionalities and the less you depend on external elements and programs, the better.
3.- Apply the rule of less is more in the design
Do not get carried away only by aesthetics and apply the rule of less is more.
Each element that you introduce in the design of your website will affect the loading time of your website. What's the use of having a super beautiful website if users don't even enter because it takes too long to load?
Bet on a clean and minimalist design .
These types of designs favor the user experience, they will make your website lighter and load faster and, consequently, it will have a better positioning.
4.- Reduce the size and weight of the images
Images represent more than 60% of the weight of your website .
This does not mean that you eliminate them, because they are important, but it does mean that you should optimize them to the maximum .
There are plugins like WP Smush that are responsible for compressing the images when uploading them to your website.
But, even so, I recommend that you also optimize the weight and size of your images before uploading them with a tool such as Photoshop, Optimizilla or Compressor.io .
5.- Avoid unnecessary plugins
The offer of WordPress plugins is almost endless. There are all kinds of them, to add multiple functionalities to our website and do practically everything we can imagine.
There is no doubt that plugins can make our lives much easier. But don't be tempted.
Install only those that are really worth it and remember to uninstall and remove those plugins that you may have installed at any given time but that you no longer use.
Plugins, some more than others, can overload your website and make it slower.
6.- Optimize the code and avoid saturation
Excess code affects the loading speed of your website.
Every time you introduce an element or external program to your website, HTML, CSS (Style Sheets) and non-optimized JavaScript are added and layers and layers of code are generated .
Do you remember what I told you before about themes and templates?
Many do not take advantage of the native functions of WordPress and, to work correctly, they require the use of external programs, shortcodes and plugins that can end up saturating the code of your website.
That you do not enter the code manually, does not mean that this code is not there.
Avoid code clutter and think about whether it's worth sacrificing loading speed .
7.- Minimize CSS and optimize the cache
One of the most common recommendations of tools that test the loading speed is to minimize CSS (Style Sheets) and take advantage of caching in the browser.
By minimizing the CSS, the server will have to read less information and will be able to display the page to the user faster.
For its part, taking advantage of the cache storage in the browser will allow users not to have to load your entire website every time they enter.
In this way, part of the elements will be saved and you will be able to access the web faster.
Everything is adding up and, taking into account that every thousandth of a second counts, it is worth it.
An easy way to fix this is the WP Rocket plugin.
8.- Be careful with the excess of redirects
Redirects are useful but, if you go overboard, they will affect the loading speed of your website.
Why? Because every time a user wants to access a page with a redirect, the server will spend more time showing it to him, because he will first have to go to one page and then to another to be able to display it correctly.
The redirect affects all files on the page , including images, CSS, and JavaScript.
Everything adds to the time that the server must invest to show the page to the user and, as you already know, every thousandth account. The less work the server has to do, the faster your website will load.
This is not to say that you completely banish redirects, because they do their part, but use them when really necessary and knowingly.
Be very careful also with 404 errors , which cause unnecessary requests to the server, in addition to directly affecting the user experience.
Conclusions
That your website loads as quickly as possible is decisive. For your users and for Google. And, very especially, when we talk about mobile devices.
An extra second can be losing you a lot of traffic and conversions.
There are many factors that you must take into account. Some are more important than others, but all can help you scratch milliseconds to speed up the loading of your website.
Above all, pay close attention to the following:
- Choose a quality hosting that is stable and guarantees an optimal response time
- Choose a template that is as clean and optimized as possible. Do not get carried away only by aesthetics
- Simplify the design. Keep in mind that each element will overload the code and the weight of your website.
- Optimize the size and weight of the images on your website
Questions, comments? I'll wait for you down here!
Well done brother, thank you for the valuable content, and I encourage you after converting the content to the English language, because often we Arabs do not care about valuable content
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear brother, for your kind words. I try as much as possible to provide long English content to serve the readers simple and easy.
DeleteThank you again