There’s an old adage in sports: “Speed kills.” This saying holds true for websites as well. Maybe not in the way it’s meant in sports, but page speed is a vital element in the competitive spaces of the Internet.
The concept of site speed is straightforward to understand: it’s the time it takes for your webpage to load when someone lands on it. Today, users need things to load instantly, and a slow website can hurt your business by driving potential visitors away before they even see your content. In 2016, Google reported that 53% of users leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. As we said, “Speed Kills.”
When it comes to user experience and SEO, page speed is a crucial factor that affects everything from page rankings to how users interact with your site and whether they convert into customers. To put it plainly, the faster your site, the better the overall performance. But you know that what you need help with is actually making your site faster, and we’re here to help you achieve just that.
Breaking down page speed and Core Web Vitals
While the concept of page speed is easy enough to understand, there are various moving parts and factors that go into how your website is judged. Understanding page speed is essential because it impacts how users experience your site. This measurement includes the time it takes for the page to load entirely, but Google likes to note specific moments that contribute to that overall score, such as when page elements become visible or interactive or if parts of the site shift around.
These measurements of specific moments are called Core Web Vitals. Google uses these metrics to gauge user experience and use that as a means to prioritize faster websites with better experiences in search results. The three main metrics are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How quickly the most significant piece of content loads (should be under 2.5 seconds).
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): The time it takes for a page to respond to a user’s interaction the moment the browser renders the result (should be less than 200 milliseconds).
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Do elements on a page shift? This gauges the visual stability of a page as it loads (aim for a score of less than 0.1).
Focusing on these metrics can improve both your user experience and search engine rankings.
Testing site speed and Core Web Vitals
While anyone can load up a webpage and get a general idea of how quick or responsive it is, you need to find out exactly where your website stands. Not only that, Google and other search engine base site speed off of a “mid-tier device (Moto G4) device on a mobile network“, something that you might not be able to replicate with your top-of-the-line phone in a major city.
Speed tests provide a clear picture of your site’s performance and highlight problem areas. Industry-standard tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix are invaluable for analyzing key metrics such as Time to First Byte (TTFB) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
These tools not only give performance scores but also provide detailed suggestions for improvement (Oh, and they’re free).
Plug in your website and get a rundown of what you can do to improve it. If you’re looking for some general help or trying to understand what those callouts mean, I’ve broken down some of the best ways to improve your site speed based on your proficiency level.
Beginner tips for improving site speed
If you’re just starting to optimize site speed, these tips are easy to implement and will make a noticeable impact without requiring advanced technical skills. Some of these will require some manual work, but they’re more time-consuming than they are complex and can really improve your website in the long run.
- Optimize images
Large, uncompressed images are a common cause of slow websites. We get it—you snapped an awesome picture of your office. However, that 3MB picture is a big weight on the page’s load time.
The goal is to keep pictures under 100KB, and a couple of fixes exist.
You can manually resize the images. Crop some, resize the dimensions and compress until they’re still clear but within the target file size. Another option is converting your images to modern, efficient formats like WebP, which maintains quality while significantly reducing file sizes.
Additionally, you can use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress your images further. For WordPress users, plugins like Smush or ShortPixel automate this process.
- Enable lazy loading
Lazy loading can typically be activated in the back end of a website with the click of a button. Lazy loading makes it so that images and other media not within view only load when they’re about to enter the user’s screen. This reduces the initial load time, especially for image-heavy pages. Many CMS platforms, including WordPress, offer built-in lazy loading options or plugins like Yoast to make this implementation simple. Be sure to exclude key visuals (such as logos or hero images) from lazy loading so they appear instantly.
- Use browser caching
Caching allows browsers to store versions of your website’s files locally, reducing the need to download everything on each visit. This can dramatically reduce load times for returning visitors. Although this sounds technical, it’s easy enough to install caching plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket to implement browser caching.
BONUS: These plugins offer other speed optimization features, like minimizing CSS and JavaScript.
Intermediate tips for improving site speed
These tips require more technical knowledge but offer significant speed improvements. They can be the next step after optimizing your images. These tips are perfect for those comfortable making moderate adjustments to their website’s setup.
- Update and minimize plugins
Plugins are fantastic, but every plugin adds additional scripts and resources that your website must load. While some plugins are essential for your website, many are not. To streamline your website, ensure your plugins are up-to-date and remove unused or redundant ones. Stick with lightweight, well-coded plugins that serve a clear purpose. This not only speeds up your site but also reduces the risk of plugin conflicts and security vulnerabilities.
- Leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A CDN helps distribute your site’s content across servers located worldwide, reducing the distance between your site’s server and its visitors. This cuts down on latency, leading to faster load times regardless of where the user is located—like having an Amazon warehouse down the street instead of upstate.
Popular CDNs, like Cloudflare, seamlessly integrate with most platforms and handle the delivery of static resources such as images, videos, and scripts, allowing your site to load more efficiently for a global audience.
- Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Minification removes unnecessary characters like spaces and comments from your website’s code, reducing file sizes and improving load times. This can be done manually or through optimization plugins like Autoptimize or WP Rocket, which automate the process and ensure your site’s functionality isn’t affected. Although it may seem small, minifying files can shave valuable milliseconds off your loading times. When loading is a race between you and competition, that time can be a difference maker.
Expert tips for improving site speed
These expert-level techniques require advanced knowledge of website development and server configurations. Implementing them will provide maximum optimization for speed and performance, but we recommend letting your dev or SEO team handle these tasks.
- Optimize server response time
Your server’s response time (TTFB) is crucial for site speed. Opt for a high-performance hosting provider with fast servers. Ensure you’re using the latest PHP version, as older versions can slow down performance. Consider using LiteSpeed servers for their built-in caching features, or at least ensure your server is well-optimized for speed.
- Implement preloading and prefetching
Preloading tells the browser to prioritize certain resources, like fonts or images, ensuring they load immediately. Prefetching prepares the browser for files that will be needed soon, cutting down on load time. These strategies reduce the lag between user interactions and page updates, making your site feel more responsive. This can be achieved through custom code or optimization plugins that support these features.
- Optimize database queries
Optimizing database queries is critical if your site relies heavily on a database (such as with WordPress). Regularly clean your database, removing unnecessary data like spam comments, post revisions, or unused metadata. Indexing your database tables can also improve query speeds. Plugins like WP-Optimize can automate these tasks, or you can manually optimize the database if you’re more familiar with SQL queries.
Final thoughts on improving site speed
Whether you’re comfortable making minor adjustments or ready to dive into advanced techniques, there are plenty of ways to boost speed at any level. One important thing to note is that any improvements help! If you can fix just one of the issues, you’ll notice an improvement and eventually get a return for the efforts.
However, if some of these optimizations feel too complex or time-consuming, don’t hesitate to ask for help. At Redefine, we’ve done this before and can guide you through the process and ensure your site is running at peak performance so you can focus on growing your business. Reach out if you have any questions about page speed or SEO.
