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We have all felt that twinge of impatience when we’re waiting for a website page to load to read a blog, make a purchase, watch a video, etc.
And it’s not just us as humans that have that ‘need for speed’, but the search engines demand it as well.
Website performance is one criteria that Google (and other search engines) will use to rank your site in search results.
Is it snappy and responsive? Are people spending time on it? Is it deemed ‘worthy’ to be returned in the oh-so-special first page results of a google search?
While your choice of hosting provider plays a role, there are also things you can implement proactively to improve performance as well. We at Digi use and recommend Bluehost for a cost effective and efficient website host.
Here are 4 free things to implement on your site that will help improve your load time.
Click here for the video version of this post!
- TinyPng
An absolute must on any website with images is TinyPng. Smaller image sizes means snappier load time.
This is an image compression tool that reduces PNG image sizes by removing unnecessary bloat and space with virtually no significant impact on quality. An added bonus for this tool is that on some browsers animated PNG images are supported as well. Fun!
You can drag and drop PNG files directly on their website interface for individual or multiple image compression then simply download the zip result, and watch the amazing space saving numbers increase.
Even better, if you use WordPress, there is a plugin that will automate this process when building your site.
If Photoshop is your go to graphic designer there is a plugin for that too.
What’s not to love?
2. GZIP Compression
Similarly to the way image files can be compressed, other types of files on your website can be compressed too!
After all, at their core, these files are just text that gets translated into bits and bytes..with some space in between, which can be squeezed out by techniques like GZIP compression.
This site, Gift of Speed will evaluate your site to detect if GZIP is enabled or not.
It may already be implemented as a result of caching plugins you may be using if you are using WordPress.
If it’s not enabled, there are steps to enable it, albeit a bit techy, but definitely worth it to get your site to load faster.
3. Minifier
Minnie who?
Another must have for speed improvements is a tool to reduce the size of CSS (cascading style sheets) and JS (Javascript) files.
Minimizing these types of files removes whitespaces, comments, extraneous things in the file that really, only humans need to see and decipher.
At the machine language level after all, things are just bits and bytes, 0s and 1s.
Really. That’s what it all boils down to.
Similar to TinyPng, there are websites like CSSMinifier and Javascript Minifier where you can cut and paste your css/js files and get a compressed version returned.
And of course there’s multiple choices of WordPress plugins available to accomplish this as well.
- Bonus Tip:
- Our ‘rule of thumb’ for knowing which plugin to choose for a task lies in evaluating
- how recently has it been updated? (are the developers keeping it up to date?)
- is it compatible with the most current version of WordPress? (obvs!)
- how many times has it been installed? (there’s safety in numbers!)
4. Cache is king
A caching plugin is a must have for any site.
The process of caching is simply storing frequently accessed data in your visitor’s web browser (client side caching) or on your hosting provider’s web server (server side caching).
Without any caching enabled, your website visitors would essentially be loading your website into their browser…Every. Single Time. they view a page. Not good!
Caching is a shortcut way to load pages faster.
There are mechanisms built into the plugins that detect when content changes so that your visitors are getting your updated content and not stale data.
It’s a beautiful thing.
All of these tips can be implemented at no cost. However, if you are able and willing to invest some money into your site, premiums plugins and tools can be used for optimum performance.
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