7 Affordable Ways To Increase Your Website’s Speed
Page speed measures how quickly a web browser can load all the elements of a page such as images, videos and text. It affects how much revenue your website generates, which is directly related to the website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Your website score matters because a very slow website is almost like not having one at all. That’s why this matters for your website, especially if you’re involved in eCommerce or online business. But how can you make your website load faster without spending too much?
In this article, you’ll learn cost-effective ways to increase your website’s speed.
1. Track Your Metrics
You can get some clues that your website isn’t performing as it should be if you have low website metrics. If your website is slow, online users will exit your site right away and find the information they’re looking for somewhere else.
While you may already have an idea of what’s causing your website to load so slowly, it’s still important to track important metrics such as your site’s bounce rate to give you a hint of the next steps you have to take. Don’t miss evaluating your metrics, because this step is crucial to attaining your website goals.
2. Compress Files
Do you use several high-quality images on your website and notice your loading speed is sluggish? It’s because you haven’t changed the size of the image files. Unoptimized images in large sizes are one of the most common reasons behind website sluggishness. High-resolution images tend to consume plenty of bandwidth when loading.
The page weight can affect the overall speed of your website. Hence, if your website contains large files, you should reduce their sizes. You can use a free or open software application for file compression for JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and other programming languages to reduce file size.
You can also reduce image file sizes through photo editing software before uploading the photos to your website, ensuring they don’t take much bandwidth.
3. Minify The Code
Minifying your website’s code makes it optimized and properly formatted. So, you have to design your website properly from the start. Caching is important, so a big portion of your files are stored on a user’s browser to avoid re-downloading when they visit your website. Hence, caching frees up significant space on your web server.
4. Remove Unnecessary Plugins
Older websites tend to have unnecessary plugins, excess codes, and unused content. Remove them to make your website faster. In this way, you can optimize the full potential of your website for a more powerful branding platform to showcase your products and services.
5. Utilize A Content Delivery Network
Using a content delivery network (CDN), which is a network of servers worldwide, enables you to store and duplicate the static files and elements of your website such as documents, videos, images, CSS, and JavaScript.
With a CDN, your visitors all over the world won’t have to wait for their web browser’s turn to load. A local web server closer to the user will run it quickly for them. You can find free CDN services on cloud networks and CDN edge servers for fast content delivery. Utilizing a CDN tends to be inexpensive.
6. Overhaul Your Website
Rebuilding your website is a great way to eliminate many reasons why a website is slow. Not everyone can afford to do this, but you can fix some issues without totally rebuilding.
You can avoid more costly expenses at once by overhauling your website. Partnering with a reliable web design agency can help find the most cost-effective solution to rebuild your site to avoid skyrocketing upfront costs. It’s also possible that a web design agency can offer flexible payment schemes for those with a tight budget.
7. Test Page Speed
You can run a series of tests to identify performance problems on your site and direct you on how to resolve them. Website speed optimization tools are easy to understand. They provide clear explanations to help check your website’s page speed and other key performance indicators. Of course, there are free and paid versions of these tools that you can take advantage of without breaking your bank.
The speed of your website can affect your conversions, leads, and sales. Because you already know the importance of a fast-loading site and how to make this possible, you’re now ready to revamp your existing platform to attract more potential customers for your business growth. Consider the ideas mentioned here as you evaluate your site.
