A vital metric governing your site’s performance is your page loading speed. You need to understand how this metric works to do anything to improve it.

Quick page loading speeds can reduce your website’s bounce rate and increase traffic engagement. You must optimize the factors that, in turn, improve the speed of your website.

In addition to favoring the user experience, website speed is also an aspect of utmost importance from the SEO point of view (Search Engine Optimization)

Delay in loading a page is highly unpleasant for the visitor, and Google, which is all about “users first,” does not welcome a site that makes its visitors unhappy.

You can easily tune up your website’s loading speed by following the 9 tips below before wasting more time. Let’s get into this.

But before that, let’s quickly look at what’s considered an ideal website loading speed.

What is a good website speed?

Research shows that users typically wait somewhere between 0.3 to 3 seconds before losing focus and moving on to another site. This means you should aim for anything below the mark of 3 seconds.

Below are the recommended thresholds that you should aim for:

	Good	Poor	Percentile
Largest Contentful Paint	<2500ms	<4000ms	75
First Input Delay	<100ms	<300ms	75
Cumulative Layout Shift	<0.1ms	<0.25ms	75

You can learn more about these criteria from Google here.

When you measure the page load time, ensure you try to get as much data as possible from all kinds of devices. You’ll need to get data from both the desktop and mobile devices. 

Remember that, even though the metrics for your desktop devices are well below the thresholds mentioned above, you will still need to do some extra work to get the same performance on the mobile devices.

Also Read: Explore The 7 Best Website Speed Checkers

Now that you know what you’re aiming for, let’s quickly get to the point without wasting more time!

9 Tips To Improve The Speed Of Your Website In 2024

1. Choosing the right hosting plan

It all starts with the basics. We all know how important hosting is for your website. If you are using shared hosting, then your website’s overall performance will likely be subpar. 

Consider upgrading the hosting service plan if you use WordPress. The best hosting is the one that is well known for being high-performance yet stable, just like our customers have described our hosting service, Nestify.

With hosting, you get three main options:

Shared – These hostings are traditionally the most economical as they allow one server’s resources with several customers. Page loading speed might be on the lower side if you use it.

VPS – VPS is a Virtual Private Server, significantly faster than shared hosting due to using several machines compared to just one shared hosting.

Dedicated – These servers are the most expensive of the three. With this one, you rent an entire machine for your website, and here, you can let all of your website design ideas run wild. The speeds with this type are indeed impeccable.

Serverless – Recently, serverless hosting has gained popularity in the hosting space as it offers high scalability at a fraction of the cost.

2. Write code for mobile first!

Mobile devices are the new norm in today’s age. Earlier, the devs used to write code and test the websites on their desktop devices, and then later, they would optimize the same for mobile devices. 

This is often a complex process, as many features must be reduced to ensure everything fits on the mobile screen.

Hence, it is always wise to write code for mobile devices first. This way, you do not need to optimize your website, as it already gets written in the version that needs optimization. 

You can then quickly expand your elements to fit the widths and heights of a desktop screen. This is a much more straightforward process.

Note: If you are using some kind of mobile emulator and not an actual device for testing your website, then in that case, make sure you also adjust your network and CPU to the speeds that match most mobile devices.

3. Reduce your redirects

More redirects can help with the website loading times. Every time a page redirects to somewhere else, it prolongs the HTTP request and the response process.

You can reduce your redirects in WordPress in a few ways. The straightforward approach is to avoid creating unnecessary menus and internal links. 

And the other method is to ensure that your Top-Level Domain (TLD) executes with one redirection at maximum. The Patrick Sexton Redirect mapper tool can help you uncover any duplicate redirects. 

Another tool that can prove to be of great help is the Screaming Frog tool, which helps users identify all the redirects on your site and where exactly they lead. 

This way, you can discard all the unnecessary redirects that don’t serve a purpose. You can delete those via your site’s .htaccess file.

4. Less is more when it comes to the page loading speed

A colorful, dynamic website, with elegant elements placed at the correct positions, can be a treat to the eyes of the user, but what use is it if the user bounces off before even the site fully loads?

On the other hand, a simple website ensures a good user experience. I’d highly recommend you always say this when brainstorming a design: “Less Is More.”

An excellent example of this philosophy is the Pet Insurance website, which uses none of the fancy images, colors, and design elements on its home page and loads at lightning-fast speeds.

The best thing to do is to use only the essentials, preferring an objective design and features that are needed. So, in addition to making your site more user-friendly, it will undoubtedly load much faster.

5. Reduce the number of plugins

Plugins are supplementary pieces of functionality used in content management systems like WordPress. Users can get additional functionality, such as analytics or the ability to leave the comments on the blog posts.

But like everything, these extra powers do come with a cost. Each plugin you install on your website must load additional JavaScript and CSS files.

Some plugins will also increase the time taken to first bytes (TTFB) because they need additional processing on the server for each page request.

Hence, it is a wise move to go through your plugin list occasionally and ensure that you are only using the absolutely essential ones. The plugins that do not serve any purpose for your website must be deleted at once.

6. Make use of the website caching functionality

Caching is basically saving a version of your files in a temporary storage location. Saving these files to a temporary location makes them easier to access the next time you load the same page.

Several advantages of enabling the browser cache include reduced bandwidth consumption, faster load times, reduced latency, and server load, etc.

However, the main downside to enabling cache is that there will be at least two versions of your site at any time. This can cause issues if you are using a real-time service that needs to rely on accurate data. 

Although, this can be addressed by forcing a subsection of the cache to clear when new data is loaded.

7. Eliminate the 404 errors

Error 404, aka Broken files, puts a lot of load on your servers, leading to slower speeds. Additionally, 404 errors can harm your conversion rates due to an apparent breakage in the user journey.

To reduce the 404 errors, tools like Google Search Console or plugins that detect broken links can significantly help. Once you find such links on your webpage(s) from there, you can delete or redirect them.

Using customer service software to troubleshoot issues can also help users across the 404 error links.

8. Use the Gzip Compression

Users can enable the Gzip compression on their HTTP servers. For those who don’t know, Gzip compression reduces the size of HTTP responses for specific file types.

The .gz extension usually denotes the file format that results from the GZIP compression. This type of compression is mainly used for textual responses only.

As a result, it dramatically favors the website load times and helps save bandwidth.

9. Optimize your image size

Many websites need to go a little heavier with the graphics, so they heavily use images on their web pages. Now, if you do not compress your images or use ones with a higher resolution, it will slow down your website’s loading speed and overall performance.

Some websites use images of abnormally high resolution so that they are displayed well on high-res shows like the popular retina screens. But you are wasting your precious bandwidth if most users do not use any HiDP display.

This results in slower loading time for your visitors, especially on slower mobile data connections. One good technique is to specify multiple image sizes to allow the browser to select the appropriate image based on the screen resolution.

Once you are confident that your users are seeing the correct resolution images on their respective devices, you can focus on the image size, another critical parameter. Check out our guide on this subject.

Using the right kind of images is essential, too! Always use the JPEG format for the images with many colors, like the photos, and use PNG for simpler graphics.

Also Read: Top 11 Image Optimization Tools And Plugins For Digital Quality

Conclusion: Improve the speed of your website

Even the slightest improvement in your website loading speed can result in considerable results in terms of retention rates, improving the SEO score, and even sales. It is a win-win situation for you and your prospects.

But it can be pretty challenging as a beginner, and you may wonder, “Where do I even start?.” My answer would be to start with the essential areas, like compressing the images, eliminating the broken links from the web pages, weekly or biweekly monitoring your plugins, and ensuring you only use the necessary ones.

Also, it is good to remember that it is not a one-time process that needs to be done in one day. Start slow. Monitor the tool reports, make gradual changes to your website, and compare the before and after performance.

I hope this simple guide on improving the speed of your website was useful. Please feel free to ask me any questions regarding the same in the comment section.

FAQs: Improve The Speed Of Your Website

What are the latest trends influencing website speed optimization in 2024?

The latest trends impacting website speed optimization are technological advancements, including improved server infrastructure, optimized code practices, and efficient content delivery networks (CDNs).

How can I test my website’s current speed-performance?

Various online tools, like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom, can help you analyze your website’s speed.

What role does mobile optimization play in improving website speed?

Optimizing your website for mobile devices is crucial with the increasing use of mobile devices. Responsive design, image optimization, and minimizing HTTP requests are essential areas that should be paid attention to for improving website performance.

Are there any specific considerations for e-commerce websites in terms of speed optimization?

E-commerce sites should focus on optimizing product images, using efficient caching strategies, and ensuring fast checkout processes to enhance the overall page loading speed of their site and a good user experience.