Your website is slow and it’s costing you traffic. What’s the best way to speed it up?

Slow website speed is considered "down time" from user perspective. According to recent Splunk's digital resilience study, 2 seconds of delay could turn 87% customers away from the website. Hence the importance of optimizing website performance.

TLDR: Reduce the stuff you are trying to do. Stop doing so much on a page. You don't need granular analytics about user actions, banner ads, video ads, recommended content widgets, and survey pop-ups all at once. The only reason the user visited your site was to get a recipe. In an age where LLMs are eating publishers' lunch money, the focus should be to provide massive value to the end user. Otherwise, users will migrate to alternatives that provide the answer quicker, and no monetization strategy can solve that.

Speed matters, but it's also not everything. Yes, if your site takes 10 seconds to load, no matter who you are that's a problem. But for many companies, aesthetics are often lost unnecessarily in the pursuit of milliseconds of load time in the hopes that the SEO floodgates will open. It doesn't really work like that. First, decide if SEO is even the right strategy for you. Do you even have a chance of being competitive? Then figure out how much speed will matter to your bottom line. If SEO is not your main strategy, and your keywords are super competitive, or if you have a very limited market and you're not getting tons of traffic anyway, then user experience is often more important than simply trying to get your site to load faster.

To accelerate your website, start by optimizing images and multimedia elements to reduce file sizes and enhance loading speed. Implement browser caching and utilize Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to distribute content across multiple servers, minimizing latency for users. Lastly, streamline code, leverage asynchronous loading, and consider upgrading hosting infrastructure to ensure a fast and seamless browsing experience, ultimately retaining and attracting more traffic.

Often denigrated by SEO expert (who prefers to sell content creation), the speed of a website remains one of the most important pillars of technical SEO, for 2 main reasons : - Google likes fast websites because people do and it make it easy to crawl it. - People likes fast websites, they spend more time on it and see more pages, this is good for engagement, so for SEO. It's a virtuous circle.

World is getting more & more impatient. If you website is aesthetically cool and loaded with great content, but if does not open under 3 or max 4 seconds, then its a big turnoff for the users coming to consume what you've created. This not only impacts the organic traffic but also the multi-million dollars of marketing spend you are spending on your performance campaigns. Higher bounce rates will eventually hurt your page ranking and shot your marketing cost. Hence continuously monitoring and taking appropriate measure is the key.

To make your website faster and stop losing visitors, do these things: Make pictures smaller and simplify your website's code. Make sure your site works well on phones and computers. Use browser caching to help your site load faster. Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to spread your data around the world quickly. Keep your website simple by not having too many ads or pop-ups. Think about getting better hosting to improve website speed. Always check how fast your website is and make changes as needed. This will help your site be quick and easy for people to use, keeping them coming back.

Website speed is critical for both user satisfaction and SEO performance. ⏱️ Slow loading times lead to higher bounce rates and lost conversions, impacting PPC ad effectiveness and customer retention. Additionally, search engines penalize slow sites, reducing organic visibility and traffic. Prioritizing website speed optimization is essential for maximizing user experience and search engine rankings.

Here are some effective ways to speed up your web 1. Optimize Images: Compress images without sacrificing quality using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim. Use appropriate formats (JPEG for photographs, PNG for graphics) and dimensions to reduce file size. 2. Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript: Remove unnecessary characters like whitespace and comments from code. Tools like UglifyJS and CSSNano can automate this process, reducing file sizes and speeding up loading times. 3. Enable Browser Caching: Set expiration dates for static resources like images, CSS, and JavaScript to be stored in the browser cache. This reduces server load and improves loading times for returning visitors.

• Users 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 sites to load in under 3 seconds. • Delays lead to higher 𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 and lost conversions. • Slow sites suffer in 𝗦𝗘𝗢 𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀, impacting organic visibility. • Optimizing speed retains users and enhances 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲.

Benchmark your website first, then you can trouble shoot. Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, WebPageTest are a few tools you can use to test website speed.

GT Metrix seems to be the gold standard today and Google Page speed insights works great too. Keep an eye out for something new though...once a gold standard is established like GT - that's when they really monetize and cost goes up. Always need to keep your eyes open for the 'new kid on the block'.

• Utilize tools like 𝗟𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 (directly in Chrome), 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀, and 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱𝗳𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗲. • Analyze recommendations provided by these tools for 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Personally, I use GT metrix to measure overall results because it is less forgiving in arriving at my goals. On the other hand, I use Google PageSpeed Insight for recommendations for improvements because, hey, they are the bosses.

There are multiple of doing it and ensuring your website speed is way within global standards. It is important to deep dive first into various things that are increasing your website - User Interface (UI) is a big part of it. Then there are browsers, devices and also geo-locations where you want your website is accessible. There are multiple free or paid tools like available today e.g. Google's PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, Sematext, DareBoost etc. These platforms are widely used and gives detailed report on multiple parameters which you can consider to improve your website speed. DareBoost also offers you interactive frame-by-frame video playback which is icing on the cake and makes your life easier.

Before launching the website, it's crucial to conduct thorough speed and optimization tests locally. Using tools like Lighthouse and DevTools to assess DOM speed and loading time is sufficient for measuring speed. Achieving excellent scores locally ensures that speed won't drop in the live version of the website. so the lighthouse and Devtools are pretty enough to do this process.

Hire a specialist aka a sysadmin and an SEO. These two professionals will transform any slow site into a blazing fast web rocket. Easier said than done to minify CSS, JS, and HTML. With the popularity of CMS you don’t have any leverage. Developers of CMS are notoriously bad at optimizing for SEO and webperf. Same with caching. Don’t optimize hosting of the cache and you will increase latency. Basically you create a bigger problem by trying to tacle the caching challenge. There is so much to do on the server side. A dedicated server AND a skilled sysadmin will solve most of the issues. A SEO audit will address issues concerning a very particular user called GoogleBot.

HTML first, CSS next, and JavaScript only if you really need it! There's been a tendency in the last few years to use JavaScript frameworks even for simple things that can be rendered by plain (modern) HTML and CSS, and that's very wrong. Being frugal with JavaScript and CSS, and using modern HTML "to the max" can make a huge difference in terms of performance, by reducing the network and browser load. JavaScript frameworks (*) are fantastic tools _when you actually need them_, like for the really interactive islands in your pages. But plain HTML should be your first choice for everything else. (*) or Web Components, which might need a bit more code but are reusable in more contexts and more durable, being standards-based.

All these thoughts are great that are listed here already. But in short - stop trying to do so much with your website. The process/funnel/CTA should be simple and straightforward. No one wants to see 50 videos and long winded explanations. Minimize what you're doing - reduce banners/plugins/ads/popups/chats/videos and the excess chaos. You'll convert quicker and at a higher rate.

There are a few things you can do to optimize website speed. For example, deactivate and remove unused plugins; enable brower caching; keep external scripts to a minimum; use a contend delivery network.

Here are 3 strategies to consider when trying to optimize speed. Prioritize Above-the-Fold Content (Critical Rendering Path Optimization): Focus on loading the content visible to users first (above the fold) before loading the rest of the page. This makes the site feel faster as it becomes usable sooner. Optimize Server Response Time: Analyze and enhance your server's performance. Look into upgrading your hosting solution, optimizing your web server software, and improving backend logic and database queries. Implement Advanced Caching Techniques: Beyond basic browser caching, explore server-side caching, and application-level caching. Tools like Redis or Memcached can significantly speed up dynamic content.

Scale down image and unnecessary videos and files: A fast and simple website gets more engagement with relevant content, it’s one essential website must have.

Content isn't always king! I have seen so many slow websites today with large white papers, video files, and full size images. Although these are all great tools consider the application. If you have videos that you want to share with clients when they visit your site, use lower res videos and provide links to your YouTube channel or Vimeo page to give the larger option. Use web ready graphics and images, not full res images. Instead of providing every white paper your company has ever written, choose 1 or 2 that are key and relevant for the market today. Most importantly, although you may have a lot to say, remember that your website doesn't need to say it all for you. It needs to get the clients interest so you can tell them the rest.

Google Analytics and Pingdom can be used to monitor website speed. Make sure you monitor it regularly and make adjustment accordingly.

You can monitor the speed of a site manually or automatically. - Manual: run a Google page speed or a webpagetest on the same URL, at regular intervals, to see if there are any score variations. - Automatic: go to the Google search console, Core Web Vitals section, Google gives the volume of urls considered slow, to be improved or fast, with a history. - Crawl your site regularly and retrieve performance indicators such as TTFB. And others.

RUM, Real User Monitoring, gives you actual and specific data, if you can setup your website to provide that or use a product that does. See my comments on "How to measure speed" above.

⚡️ Speed matters! Here are some tips to enhance your site's speed: Optimize images: Compress images to reduce file size without sacrificing quality. Minimize HTTP requests: Combine CSS/JS files, use sprites, and reduce redirects. Enable browser caching: Store static files on visitors' devices to speed up subsequent visits. Utilize Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Distribute content across multiple servers worldwide for faster loading times. Prioritize above-the-fold content: Load critical content first for a smoother user experience. Speed up your website and leave a lasting impression on your visitors! 💻

To do so, the first thing is to optimize elements used in the website like: images, video, gif's, etc. these are one of the most common elements which company's miss to look at while making website. Then there are unnecessary pop-ops, take-over videos/grabs etc. which also add to the speed. Then there are external scripts usage, bulky or cluttered coding practices, not using good hosting service providers, caching and de-caching of content, load balancing techniques etc. Again, there are readily available tools which help you identify, monitor, track and recommend insights. And yes, one has to regularly track and update the pages to be ahead. Tools like Google Lighthouse, Cloudfare observatory etc.

Performance is a mindset, you cannot add it late in a project. It needs to be part of your team's culture, with the appropriate priority in terms of resources and planning so that it's built into your work. I remember teaching C++ to engineers working on software for watches, more than twenty years ago, and those folks were always asking about the performance and power consumption impact of various software constructs, which was surprising to me. Even if our computing resources are immensely larger than a watch of the 90s, we should keep some of that spirit of frugality when writing software and creating websites.

For websites that have less than 1,000 visits per day, here is my secret recipe: - Hosting with 2vCores CPU & 4 GB Ram -WordPress - Hello elementor Theme - (very) simple design - Optimized Images - Cache and Lazy Load WP Rocket By applying this, I always have better performance than competitors and therefore better SEO.

All said and done, to avoid website speed issue in the first place, all the right practices and right tools can be considered right from the planning phase itself. It will save lot of resources, money and time if all the right parameters are thought through well lead to successful planning, smooth execution and faster roll-out of the website. With tools already implemented, post roll-out tracking and monitoring will also be smooth. This will offer quick turn around if things go south.

I like to challenge my sysadmin. Before SSD was the norm, he used RAM to host the cache of a website. That was blazing fast. Today, his system is probably the best in the world. Magneto, Wordpress, Joomla, … can load in 0.05 seconds. Take web hosting seriously. A skilled sysadmin is the key to the webperf challenge. For example, don’t setup right Varnish and it will slow down your website. Don’t handle well https and your website is doomed.

Check out Orion sometime, Bertrand. You will love what has become of the Apache CMS (POSIX threads say hello to modperl and Subversion)!