At the end of 2015, India had around 239 million smartphone users. And, this number is expected to rise to more than 700 million within the next 5 years! Out of these millions of smartphone users, more than 60% prefer browsing on their mobiles rather than desktop. To satisfy these users, more than 90% of website owners have mobile websites and more than 50% have come up with mobile apps too. However, only coming up with a mobile website or app is not enough. There is a lot more you need to pay attention to.
First, let us come up with this question – How long will you wait for a website to load before you start losing patience – 1 minute, 2 minutes or more? No! It’s only a few seconds! A research has shown that on an average a user waits not more than 3 seconds for a website to load before navigating away. And with so many lightning fast websites available, why would someone wait for your slow website to load? Wouldn’t it be better for them to switch to those websites that are as good as yours with the additional benefit of faster loading? But, if you want to stop users from switching to your competitors’ websites, you need to use the following tactics in your website designing and development to increase your mobile page speed.
Unnecessary elements
You may have dozens of elements on your page that are unoptimized and unmonitored, thus being a major cause of slowing down a page. It is vital that you give a good amount of thought to check if all the elements used on your page are actually important. If a few elements are slowing down your page loading speed and you can do without them, it is better to get rid of them. Sit with professional website designers in Bangalore and let them help you get rid of the unnecessary complexities on your page and design a simpler yet effective page for your users.
Images and videos
A web page is definitely incomplete without some images and graphics. But, this does not mean you fill up your page with them only to make it look beautiful and attractive. You need to know what the reasonable amount is for using images and other multimedia on your page. Crossing that limit will slow down your page causing your customers to get impatient and annoyed, thus increasing bounce rates and reducing conversion rates. In case of images, try using JPG instead of PNG wherever possible in order to cut down the file size by 50%. While embedding a video, you need to remember that every second of delay will highly affect your brand’s value.
Caching
Ever since HTML5 has been introduced, using the browser’s local storage has become much easier. Caching all the frequently required data cancels the constant need of pulling data from the server. Because of lots of data being locally stored, the loading time is decreased. Moreover, this also helps you save your expenses on server usage and bandwidth. Additionally, your site remains partially functional even when the user is offline or your server is down for maintenance.
JavaScript and CSS
DOM or Document Object Model ready time of your site needs to be accelerated to reduce lag and bounce rats. JavaScript increases this DOM ready time and thus, increases bounce rates. Even CSS requires your visitors to download files to view the page, which again adds to the loading time of your page. So, you must make it a point to minimize JavaScript and CSS as much as possible. Remove every unnecessary object from the downloadable files, don’t add unnecessary comments and get rid of any white space that these files may have.
CDN services
Content needs time for travelling. Even a single asset that adds even the tiniest bit of latency matters. Thus, it is better to use CDN in order to have your page exist on multiple servers across the globe so that wherever a user gets onto your site, he gets to see it faster. CDN stores your page in servers all over the world so that it loads almost instantly for any user browsing through it sitting anywhere in the world.
You may have put in loads of hard work, time and money in getting your page designed and developed. Don’t let a delay of few seconds ruin all of it. Use the above mentioned tactics and enjoy the benefits. Either utilize these strategies yourself or seek help from professional website designers in Bangalore to enhance your mobile page speed along with increasing your conversion rate.
