7 Tips to Boost your Website Speed and Performance

Website speed is probably one of the first impressions that users get about your business or brand when they arrive at your site. And as they say, “first impressions last,” it becomes essential to boost/optimize your website speed. Because no one likes to wait, be it in the physical world or the online world. Everybody just wants to get things done as soon as possible.

Even if your website speeds are a few microseconds slow to load, this can leave a negative and long-lasting image among your users. Also, Google and other major search engines don’t do any favors to slow website speeds.

That is why it becomes essential for you as a website owner to boost and optimize your website speeds as much as possible to provide your users with a positive and amazing web surfing experience. That is why our today’s article will take us through the journey on how to boost your website speed and performance in order to provide your users with an immersive web surfing experience.

Before we begin, let us clear our fundamentals first.

What does the term “Website Speed” means?

The phrase “website speed” refers to the rate at which a particular website reacts to different actions taken by users. In simpler terms, website speed is the speed at which any specific webpage loads on a given site. 

Why does high speeds matter for a website?

As we mentioned earlier during our introduction that no one likes to wait. And this is especially true in the online world. Because one of the most significant perks users expect when surfing the internet is that they do not have to wait for anything. Everything should be available to them anytime, anywhere, without any sort of delay or waiting period.

Most users will leave a site as soon as possible if they are experiencing slow speeds and bad website performance. And if users are leaving, all the resources you have invested in bringing traffic to your website go to waste. After all, the whole point of a website is to keep users engaged long enough so that they make a purchase or take a desired action for which the website exists in the first place.

That is why it becomes so vital for you as a website owner to operate a site with high speeds all the time.

Reasons that can lead to slow website speeds

1. Utilization of a lot of CSS / JavaScript.

Often due to excessive use of CSS / JavaScript, a website becomes slow over time. You may not notice this at first, but over time website speeds become slower and slower if the CSS / JavaScript aren’t optimized properly.

2. Unreliable web hosting provider

Another common reason for slow site speeds can be an unreliable or poor web hosting provider. This is often the case in free or dirt cheap web hosting providers who, in exchange for little to no money, host your website on old and bad performing servers.

3. Large picture sizes

Another common reason for slow speeds can be large picture sizes. If your website features a lot of large image files, then over time, your site becomes slower and slower to the point that they can’t even load the image properly.

4. Avoiding the use of caching in the browser

Website caching is a miraculous feature to enhance website speeds. But oftentimes, people rather avoid or forget about this simple yet effective technique and don’t enable website caching.

5. An excessive number of widgets and plugins

Suppose your website happens to have a lot of widgets and plugins installed on it. In that case, it most definitely will make your website perform badly and load slowly.

6. Low Bandwidth issues

These again can be blamed on your web hosting provider. Due to poor bandwidth range, often times a website cannot handle huge incoming traffic at the same time, and this, in turn, makes your website slow.

7. Older/un-updated browsers

An ignored but common reason for slow website speeds can be old / un-updated browsers. People don’t regularly update their browsers, and due to this, a site’s speed can be affected a lot.

Tips to Boost your Website Speed and Performance

Now that we are clear on what reasons can be there for a website to perform ad load slowly, let’s start discussing the remedies for these problems.

1. Use Website Caching for faster loadings

As we discussed earlier that most times, people either ignore or completely forget to implement website caching. Due to this, their website speeds become slower and perform poorly. That is why our first and foremost tip to boost your speed and performance is to enable website caching. It is the most simple yet effective tip on this list.

A cached site is one that maintains its content on a remote server and allows a user to quickly access it. By doing so, it makes it easier and quicker for users to retrieve the same content again in the future. There are two ways in which caching of web pages can be applied: on an individual page level as well as across an entire website.

2. Reduce the number of installed Plugins

Yes, we agree that plugins bring a lot of features to a website. Different plugins have various features that can be used to make an interactive website. But these features come at a huge cost. It hampers the most important feature of any website. Its speed.

If your website has a lot of plugins installed on it, then the load becomes higher and higher over time. This leads to slow site speeds over time that users hate more than anything. 

That is why several website experts recommend that in order to boost your website speeds, one has to reduce the number of unnecessary plugins and only keep those that are critical to the smooth functioning of your website.

3. Choose the right Hosting plan / Service for your website

Web hosting plays an important role in your website performance and speed. Suppose you host your website with an unreliable and low-standard hosting service. In that case, there’s a good chance that they are storing and hosting your website on old and poor performance servers. These servers can lead to bad reception and performance, due to which your website speed will be ultimately affected.

That is why it is often recommended to host your website with only reliable and trustworthy web hosting providers. This can lead to a much better website with high speeds, performance, security, extra features, live support, and many more such things.

4. Using Content Delivery Network (CDN) can change the game

By using content delivery networks (CDN) for your website, you can change the game when it comes to high site speeds. CDNs are a great service for websites that have an audience spread across the world. 

CDNs act more like a middleman. CDN has multiple servers spread across the world and stores your files on them. This way, even if your website is hosted on another server location and your audience is trying to access your website from another part of the world, it will load quicker and be accessed more easily without any issues. 

CDNs do this by connecting your user to the server location closest to their geographical location. Thus reducing load times and serving better website performance. Also, they are easy to set up and use.

5. Reduce your redirects for a better user experience

Your website’s performance may be improved, as well as the user experience, by reducing the number of redirects it uses. When you construct your website using outdated technology, redirects are frequently an unavoidable side effect. You may cut down on the number of website redirects and speed up your site by using some of the newer technologies. Your website will also become more stable and secure as a result of this change. In addition to this, it will assist you in avoiding any possible search engine fines.

• Refrain from establishing redirects that are repetitive or excessive.
• When required, use 301 (moved permanently) redirects on your website to guarantee that every page on your site is always available to users.
• Search for links that aren’t working properly and fix them as necessary.

6. Optimize the content on your website to eliminate slow speeds

It is very vital to optimize each and every piece of content on your website. It can be anything such as; images, videos, audio, graphics, and many more such things. To boost the speeds and performance of a website, content optimization is a necessary step.

7. Using HTTP/2

If used and implemented properly, HTTP/2 can help boost website speeds immensely. HTTP/2, compared to HTTP 1.1, uses new and modern technologies to send files to the end-user. In HTTP/2, you can easily send multiple files all at the same time as compared to HTTP 1.1, which was slower and sent one file at a time.

Conclusion

High website speeds and performance are critical parts of a good and trustworthy website among users. If your website operates slowly and performs poorly, then users are just going to leave your website eventually. That is why by implementing the above guide, anyone with a website can boost their website speed and performance to provide their users with an overall positive experience.