Website speed is an important factor for altering user experience. Even if you have all the excellent content and presentation but, if your website takes time to load, the users will navigate away from your page. The average user waiting time for a page to load is 3 to 5 seconds. Users start getting impatient after that and tend to leave your page. Hence, it is very important to increase your website speed.
When we talk about speed, it does not include only the loading time but, also the processing time. The loading time depends on two factors: the internet connection speed and the size of files you use. You can’t do anything about the connection but, you can certainly decrease your file sizes for improved loading time. The processing time depends on how well you have written your codes for the files to be processed and rendered by the browsers after downloading.
Here is a guide that lets you know the possible ways of increasing your website speed.
Optimizing Javascripts
Javascript can be too slow because it is heavy in size. The plugins and frameworks used in Java may slow down one another or one plugin might cause the others to stop. All this can increase the processing time.
- Use JavaScript only where necessary: Avoid using JavaScript where you can do without it. Use it only where you want to provide users with important information and for better navigation.
- Avoid overstyling: Try keeping the site simple and easy to load by using lesser frameworks. Overdoing JS files will slow down your site.
- External JavaScript: Browsers can cache external JavaScript files, which prevents the same files from being redownloaded by using the cached files. This improves the loading and processing time.
- JavaScript files at the bottom: Browsers start rendering from the top of the page. Hence, including JS files at the bottom can reduce the perceived loading time.
Optimizing the CSS
Your website might be able to load quickly but it might scroll slowly. It is your CSS that decides how fast a device can display your page once the files have been downloaded. You can change the settings of your CSS to increase the speed.
- Heavy CSS elements: Different CSS elements run at different speeds. For example, height, width and colour run faster than complex elements like box-shadow, border radius and transform. Be sure to use styles that render faster. Don’t overstyle your page with unnecessary features.
- CSS animations: Just like the elements mentioned above, even animations have different rendering qualities. Some animations are done by the hardware while the others have to be done by the browser. Thus, it creates a difference in the speed depending on these two factors. The fastest animation properties are positioning, scaling, rotation and opacity.
- Unused CSS: Any unused CSS in your stylesheet will unnecessarily makes your file sizes larger. It is possible that you remove or alter some content and forget to delete the old CSS. This will slow down your page loading time. You must either manually delete all the old CSS or use automated tools to find unused CSS selectors.
Optimizing your images
Images can take up the most time to load if not optimized. Here is what you need to do before loading images on your site.
- Use the right format: You must use JPEG formats for better quality. But, this uses too much space. Hence, wherever possible, use PNG for simple graphics, icons and logos.
- Compress your images: JPEG formats allow you to compress your images to as much as you want. PNG images allow you to compress upto a certain extent. If you are using WordPress, it will automatically compress the images for you.
- Use more codes: Use XML codes to render images wherever you need vector-based images.
- Use responsive images: Responsive images will help the device load the images quicker by picking up the appropriate size for the screen.
Other than the above mentioned points, you can even make other changes like compressing the text, caching your site or minimizing all the extra spaces and line breaks. All this might seem like tiny elements that involve lots of time and efforts but, it brings great results. But, you need not worry. You can hire experienced professionals to help you do the job. Jain Technosoft is one such leading web development company that can easily develop an excellent and efficient website for you to improve user experience.
