Pro Tips: Website Speed Optimization Checklist

speed optimization website increase site speeds fast load time

Every business functions with a website to ensure that it is not left in the dust by the competition. It lets people know about a company and its services or products from home and enables it to cover a bigger audience. They can visit a website online to check out the specifics of any business without the need to go to an outlet or calling up to inquire about it. But it is a double-edged sword because where it offers greater accessibility to your company, it also makes your website the determinant of what they think of your work. 

The Need For Site Speed

Getting in contact with a person enables you to influence their opinion with dialogue and work, but a website is more straightforward than that. With it, your options get significantly limited at pleasing your clients. You should be more cautious about what you put on display and the features of your webpage that can influence the opinion of your customers. Looks and functionality are the two primary areas where you need to work for better consumer response. However, when the question is about satisfaction, functionality always trumps looks. 

The speed and smoothness of your webpage help you get clients that are happy with your work. Faster response times and quicker generated results enable people to get to the item they are looking for in a cluster of products. It means less frustration and annoyance from long page scrolls and waiting periods. And immediate sales in the shortest possible time. But achieving this feat can be a challenge without adequate knowledge on the subject. 

Most businesses design their websites using WordPress, thanks to its broad range of resources and options for web designing. It is easy to understand and operate and offers high flexibility with work. But now, the bigger question is how to speed up WordPress site instantly? Well, the answer isn't too hard if you can dissect the problem. 

Here you find 7 pro tips to help you better grasp the idea of speed optimization for your website. Even if you don't get the best possible results, these should help you notice some significant upgrade in the response time of your page. 

1. Move To A Better Host

The biggest hindrance that restricts the speed of your website is the host you are using. A shared web hosting is the most common and cheapest option, but it is also the worst possible choice for optimizing speed. 

Instead, go for a virtual private or dedicated server hosting so that your configurations don't get influenced by the requests of other host clients. A VPS offers you private disk space, RAM, and processing that can hold its own against a spike in traffic. 

Cloud solutions are another excellent option to consider for hosting. It is gaining notable popularity due to promising results and extraordinary efficiency. 

2. Choose The Right Theme

A website theme can often add unnecessary and unrelated webpages to your layout as part of a package. You can try and delete most of the data, but a demo theme would still lack the efficiency you might aim. 

Choose a singular layout theme for your website so that there are multiple page requests pointed at your server whenever a user visits it. That should minimize user requests and increase the overall response time of your page. 

3. Optimize Image Size

Besides processes running on the backend, the data on the page is also responsible for dragging down the load time. Using large image file sizes for aesthetics and looks might make you feel good, but your website begs to differ. 

These specific aspects of the page take significant time to load and spoil the response time of the entire page. Make sure to check and scale them for better speed. 

4. Reduce The Use Of Plugins

Plugins are essential to add specific features to your website. They make your website more attractive and can make your webpage unique. But the problem is that more plugins require more resources to operate. 

Besides, most plugins become obsolete after a while, and newer updates get introduced. Adding them on like this without managing them makes your website slow and can pose security issues. That is why you should always keep a check on the number of plugins that you are using and delete the old ones before making any additions. 

5. Minimize Javascript & CSS Files

If you are using multiple JavaScript and CSS files, your website gets a higher number of HTTP requests at a time when a visitor chooses to access an item. This cluster gets treated individually by the browser and impedes the website's performance. 

That affects the overall run time of your website. Try to avoid it by grouping all these files in a bunch using online tools and reducing the number of HTTP requests. 

6. Website Caching

Website caching is the process in which the last updated version of your website gets presented to every user until the next update. Cached webpages can work fine without sending new database requests. It eliminates the need for it to render from scratch upon every time. 

That can help cut down enormous user traffic response time by several folds. This option is generally available for shared server hosts, but you can choose it for VPS as well. 

7. Avoid The Use Of Web Fonts

Using flashy web fonts is becoming general practice amongst users. Unfortunately, they send external requests to foreign sources to complete that request. That affects the overall response time of your webpage and makes it run slow. 

There are several ways to avoid besides stop using it completely. You can use modern formats for the latest browsers, limit the number of styles that you use, or use character sets relevant to that page. That should help minimize and overcome this effect and optimize the speed of your page. 

Site Speed Summary

These pointers help sum up a checklist of some useful pro tips to optimize the speed of your website. Make sure to revise the design of your page and check if it complies with all these guidelines. 

If you notice a part where you can make changes to improve the performance, go ahead with it before it gets complicated. Always prioritize the functionality and speed to assure a higher number of satisfied customers.

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