In today’s world, everyone is busy. If your website takes longer than your competitor’s to display important information, the user will lose focus and possibly close the browser window and will e on your competitor’s site.
A slow website will harm the entire business. Optimizing a website’s performance can avoid such problems. But how can you do that? Use performance testing. Here’s how you can implement it.
Top 18 Tips To Optimize Website Performance
1. Reduce HTTP Requests
Web browsers employ HTTP requests to get page components such as pictures, stylesheets, and scripts from a web server.
Remove any excessive requests. Remove any unneeded images, JavaScript scripts, stylesheets, and fonts. You should eliminate any extra plugins since they often load more files for each page.
2. Upgrade to HTTP/2
HTTP is the communication protocol between a browser and a remote web server. This protocol transfers the HTML of your website together with all additional resources, such as photos, stylesheets, and JavaScript files.
One solution is to minimize the number of queries. This is an excellent strategy in any scenario. Your website will always load quicker if it requires fewer resources to render, but there is another option to eliminate this cost.
HTTP/2 offers numerous improvements over HTTP/1.1. Among them is the capacity to simultaneously deliver several files over the same connection. This eliminates the cost of several requests.
3. Optimize Image Sizes
Numerous websites rely significantly on visuals. If your photographs are not compressed or have a resolution that is too high, the performance of your website will suffer. Also, use the correct file type.
Use JPEG for pictures with many colors (such as photographs) and PNG for images with fewer colors.
4. Utilize a content distribution network (CDN)
Serving static files might be challenging. Fortunately, Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs, are created specifically for this purpose. CDNs will improve the distribution of static files to your visitors, such as CSS, pictures, fonts, and JavaScript.
5. Write Mobile-First Code
Mobile technology is devouring the planet. So I’ve been told. Use any website analytics tool (e.g., Google Analytics) to monitor what your users are doing.
Typically, developers create and test websites on their desktop computers before optimizing them for mobile devices. This might be arduous depending on the decisions taken during the website’s creation.
The experience would be optimized by default for mobile devices. Then, adapting the website for desktop devices would be more straightforward. Gradually improve the experience for devices with greater processing power and screen space.
6. Minimize Time to First Byte
The browser takes a while to receive the first byte of data from the server. Therefore, this is a server-side issue, but it is crucial to the overall speed of your website.
Therefore you should take the time to address it. Optimize the application logic of the server to expedite page preparation.
7. Select the Appropriate Hosting Service Plan
The overall performance will likely be inadequate if you choose a shared web hosting service. Consider upgrading your hosting package or, if you are using WordPress, employing a managed provider renowned for its stability and speed.
8. Implement Gzip Compression
You should activate compression using gzip on your HTTP servers. Gzip compression reduces HTTP response sizes for specific file formats.
Typically, only written comments are accepted. This should minimize load times and bandwidth use.
9. Minify and merge CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files
Browsers have a limit on simultaneous network requests. If your website requires three recommendations, it will likely load quicker than if it had to load thirty different resources.
Utilizing tools like Webpack, you may have the speed advantage of a single bundle when pushing the website to production.
10. Go for Asynchronous Loading
By default, your site loads many files and services synchronously.
Fortunately, many content management systems (CMSs) come equipped with capabilities or plugins that allow for the asynchronous loading of CSS and JavaScript components, allowing them to load concurrently.
11. Reduce redirecting
When there are several redirections, the server has to work harder, which might slow down the whole process.
Although it is preferable to use a redirect initially to maintain constant content views, it is important to immediately replace old redirects with fresh content to keep load times low.
12. Reduce the Number of Plugins
Plugins provide website owners with extra functionality, such as analytics and commenting on blog entries. Look through your plugins list and remove any plugins from your website that are not essential.
13. Use Website Caching
The cache stores an easily accessible version of your data in a temporary storage place or stock.
But they may be problematic if you operate a real-time service that depends on correct data. Mitigate by clearing a subset of caches when new data is imported.
14. Audit the website more often
It’s essential to assess your site’s existing performance when making any changes that might affect how quickly pages load or how smoothly material is handled.
You may get started using a free program designed for that purpose. Use a mobile device or a desktop computer to evaluate your Core Web Vitals and let you know how you did.
15. Fix 404 errors
The 404 HTTP error is the result of a missing file. The 404 errors your server receives might add up quickly, depending on the software you’re using. Instead of adding any plugin, you can use external tools coalitional for that.
16. Eliminate Unnecessary Widgets
Widgets tend to bloat your website, resulting in slower load times since they create many queries on the front end. In addition, each request requires an extra database query. Limit the number of widgets you use to avoid such a problem.
17. Opt for a better database
Most of the content on your site relies on the accuracy of the database you use. MySQL, along with MariaDB and PostgreSQL, is the database system most widely utilized by hosting companies owing to its dependability and performance.
18. Do Cross-browser testing
Cross browser testing will help you identify browser-specific compatibility issues to speed up the debugging process.
It ensures that you only alienate a substantial portion of your target audience solely because your website is incompatible with their browser-operating system.
Conclusion
When you want to improve your website’s performance, doing performance testing has no substitute. Choose a performance testing tool like HeadSpin. HeadSpin enables AI testing that rapidly optimizes your website’s performance.
