Improve Your Website Performance Doing These 5 Things

2. Optimize Images

One of the most important and simplest things you can fully control is the size of images you load onto your website. Large, unoptimized images will slow down your website. To reduce the size of your images without sacrificing quality, use tools like TinyPNG or Compressor.io.

Using TinyPNG to compress your website’s images can significantly improve its performance and speed. When you compress an image, you reduce its file size by removing unnecessary data and making it smaller without sacrificing quality. This can help your website load faster, especially on mobile devices with slower data speeds.

To use TinyPNG, drag and drop your images onto the website, and it will automatically compress them for you. You can also use the TinyPNG API to compress images in bulk, which can be especially useful if you have a large website with many images.

Using TinyPNG is a simple and effective way to improve the performance and speed of your website. On top of compressing images, resizing the image to what you need is equally important, if not more important. Most images you download are huge. You can base how small to resize your image based on the max width of your website. Before adding any image to my website, I resize it to the required size and then further optimize it using TinyPNG. The best part is this is a free tool, which is always good!

3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN can help speed up your website by serving your content from servers worldwide, which means it can be delivered to users faster.

What is a content delivery network (CDN)? It is a distributed system of servers that delivers web content to users based on their geographic location. When a user visits a website, the CDN will serve the content from the nearest server, which can help speed up the website’s loading time. Most web hosts have a few locations to serve your content. This extension allows the site to be served closer to the actual web user.

Here are a few ways in which a CDN can improve website performance:

1. Reduces the load on the main server: By serving content from servers worldwide, a CDN can help reduce the load on the central server and improve its overall performance.
2. Improves loading times: A CDN can help improve loading times by serving content from a server closer to the user. This is especially important for users located far from the primary server, as the distance that data needs to travel can affect the speed at which it is delivered.
3. Increases capacity: A CDN can also help increase the capacity of your website, as it can handle a larger volume of traffic without the main server becoming overloaded.
4. Improves security: A CDN can also improve the security of your website by providing features such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection and secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption.

A CDN can be a valuable tool for improving the performance and security of your website. If you have a website that receives a lot of traffic or serves a global audience, consider using a CDN to help improve its performance. There are situations where this may not be helpful. For instance, if you are only concerned about your local market, a CDN probably isn’t that important. Having said that, using a CDN will generally improve the overall performance.

4. Enable Caching

Enabling caching on your website can significantly improve its performance and speed. Cashing is when a user requests a page on your website; the software will check to see if a copy of the data is available. If it is, the cached copy of the data will be provided to the user rather than generating new data. This can significantly speed up the loading time of a website, especially for users accessing the site from a remote location.

There are several reasons why it’s important to choose to enable caching on your website:

1. Improved user experience: A fast-loading website is crucial for providing a good user experience. By enabling caching, you can help ensure your website loads quickly and smoothly for your visitors.
2. Increased search engine rankings: Google and other search engines take page load speed into account when determining search rankings. By enabling caching, you can help improve your search engine rankings and make it easier for potential customers to find your website.
3. Reduced server load: Caching can also help reduce the load on your server, as it reduces the number of requests that need to be processed each time a page is accessed. This can help improve the overall performance of your website.
4. Reduced bandwidth costs: Caching can also help reduce your bandwidth costs, as it reduces the amount of data that needs to be transferred each time a page is accessed.

This is an important step for improving the performance and efficiency of your website. It can help provide a better user experience, improve search engine rankings, and reduce server load and bandwidth costs. There are many plugins you can choose to use to help support caching.

5. Minimize the Use of Plugins

Plugins are small software applications that can be added to a website to extend functionality. While plugins can be helpful, they can also slow down a website if not used carefully. Here are a few ways in which plugins can impact website performance:

1. Code bloat: Each plugin you use adds additional code to your website, which can increase the overall size of your website and slow it down.
2. Poorly written code: Some plugins may use inefficient or poorly written code, which can also slow down your website.
3. Multiple HTTP requests: Some plugins may require multiple HTTP requests to function, which can also slow down your website.
4. Resource-intensive operations: Some plugins may perform resource-intensive operations, such as making database queries or generating complex graphics, which can also slow down your website.

Minimizing plugins and carefully selecting those you use can help ensure your website performs well and loads quickly. If you’re using many plugins and your website is running slow, it may be worth deactivating some of them to see if it makes a difference.

When designing your website here at Hoke Web Solutions, we make every effort to minimize the use of plugins. Each client’s website needs are different, but only plugins that are 100% necessary will be used as part of your website design.

Conclusion

By following these tips, you can help ensure your website is fast and efficient, which can positively impact your business. I follow these tips when building my websites, and my most recent website scored 100 in the PageSpeed Insights Performance mobile rating. For those of you that don’t know, you can’t get any better.

Our team of expert web designers and developers in Columbus, Ohio, can help if you need help building a fast website. Please feel free to contact us to learn more.