Tips and Tricks to Optimize a Website's Speed
By Shabana Gandhi
Websites are becoming complex and bigger with each passing day. This is leading to slower
loading of websites and ultimately, decreased sales conversions.
An average online shopper expected a website to load in a mere four seconds in the year
2006. Over the years, remarkable technological innovations have made it tougher to meet the
expectations of an online shopper. Today, an online shopper wishes a website to load in only
two seconds. Considering that a website's loading time is so important, even Google has started
factoring site speed into its algorithm while ranking websites.
If your website is rendering poor performance, users will not even think twice before
abandoning it. Here are a few things that you should do to optimize your website's speed.
Going Modular
If it is possible to combine two CSS classes and use less code to get the same result,
you should do it instantly. This would make the code of modular type. However, this might not
be necessary if you're using basic HTML and CSS. On the other hand, following this advice becomes
essential if your website is into the complex JavaScript world.
Minimizing HTTP and Dependency Requests
Dependency requests have been the biggest reason behind slow loading speed of a website.
Any sort of additional request adds bloat and a new layer of complexity to the downloading
and parsing process. Calling images from a stylesheet also counts as a request. Hence, you
should limit the use of alternative optimization methods such as SVG or sprites.
If your website is large, you should consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
It would remove any type of slow server connections, reduce bandwidth, and improve global availability.
Writing More Readable and Smarter Code
The code that is being written can also be the reason behind slow loading of a website.
The inefficiency of CSS or a bloated JavaScript can affect the loading times, unimaginably.
Hence, instead of writing path down a chain of selectors, it would be in your best interest
to use the smallest uniquely identifiable selector.
Keeping HTML simple
In order to write leaner CSS selectors and keep bloat to the minimum, one will have to
write efficient HTML codes.
Resetting CSS will lead to restyling of all common elements. This means that even if
you are not targeting the extra div, it is very likely that the extra div will slow down things
because its padding and margin would be reset to a minimum. The problem would not be serious
until a dozen of divs are reset.
Compressing Images and Text
There are several tools that can help you compress the text and images that you are using
on your website.
A website that loads slowly disrupts a visitor's browsing experience. Other than the
size of the files, there are several other reasons like low server memory, data influx, site
design, etc., which affect the performance and speed of a website. Hence, the bottomline is
that you should monitor the performance of your website at regular intervals as it makes the
difference between generating and not generating revenue.
If you are failing to implement the tips and tricks mentioned in this article, contact
[weboorja.com site can't be reached]. We have several years
of experience in helping people optimize the speed of their static and dynamic website.
More General Web Design:
• Website Landing Pages that Capture and Convert
• Bandwidth Stealing
• How to Avoid Sloppy Web Site Copy
• Five Ways to Give Your Web Site a Big-Company Look and Feel
• Design Your Website's Directory Structure
• Define The Design of Your Website
• Ten Reasons Why a Facebook Page is Not a Replacement for a Professional Business Website
• Seven Simple Steps To Web Wealth
• 20 Easy Ways To Get People To Link To Your Web Site
• Make Your Web Site User-Friendly
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