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How to improve the speed of your website in 10 steps

You need to improve the speed of your website if you want to easily reach your target. Indeed, with the number of websites online, users are generally spoilt for choice. Therefore, when your website takes several seconds to display, you are not likely to have much visibility. A study by Think With Google has shown that many users will not return to your website if the loading time exceeds six seconds. In this article, we will see 10 key steps to improve the speed of a website.

Before getting started with improving the speed of your website

During the development process of a website, it is possible to put in place a set of measures to facilitate the optimization of the speed. Indeed, If at the base your website does not respect a set of standards, you could spend a lot of time and money on adjustments. Among the elements considered, we can mention the points below. 

The quality of the web server (Features present on a server)

When you subscribe to a subscription with a hosting provider, the features it offers potentially limit your scope of action. Indeed, some shared servers give you access to very few features. Therefore, using an application that takes more resources than the provided server does not facilitate the task. So, when you shop for a web host, 

  1. Learn about the options available to you.
  2. Make a list of the prerequisites of your web creation application to compare with the hosting provider’s offer.
  3. Rest assured that you will have enough flexibility to make some adjustments.
  4. Find out what level of support you might have. 

Of course, the options you need might have a certain cost. Therefore, it is crucial not to neglect to put a considerable budget for the acquisition of a web server. 

The quality of the code 

Many companies tend to seek the development of discount solutions. This has an impact on the quality of the product they receive. Before your website goes online, you must complete a set of validations. Among the validations, we can recommend:

Several ways to improve the speed of your website

If you want to improve the loading time of your website, these are the elements you need to monitor. 

1 – Choose a suitable server for your website

The quality of your web server plays a crucial role in the loading time of your website. Indeed, a server that does not have the necessary resources for the website creation application can have an impact on the loading time. For this, when choosing a web server, be sure to check that all options are in place. Among other things, you can look at the prerequisites of your application to compare.

2 – Create a quality solution with more flexibility

If your website is of poor quality or depends on certain tools that do not promote optimization, you may have trouble improving. You should make sure that your website is of excellent quality. In this case, we could already talk about: 

3 – Optimize the images

Images are often the main cause of websites slowing down. It is important to optimize their size and format to make them lighter. In addition, you can use online tools to compress images without loss of quality or use image compression plugins for CMS like WordPress. 

To better optimize images, you need to decide on the right formats as needed. Indeed, PNG formats usually weigh more than JPG or WebP. However, in some cases, PNG formats are preferable to JPG. As an example, if you want to add photos in a section that has a different color than the photo, you could use the PNG with a transparent background.

4 – Use a cache service

Cache services allow you to store a registered version of your website to make it more quickly accessible to visitors. This can be especially useful for high-load sites. Below are some examples of cache services: 

  1. Cloudflare: Cloudflare is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service that also offers cache features to speed up website loading times. It also protects your site from DDoS and SQL injection attacks.
  2. Varnish: Varnish is an HTTP cache software that stores saved versions of your web pages in memory for quick use by users. In addition, it is often used for high-load sites.
  3. WP Rocket: WP Rocket is a WordPress cache plugin that reduces page loading times by enabling cache, code minification, and image compression features.
  4. Memcached: Memcached is a memory cache system that stores cached data for quick access. It is also frequently used for high-demand websites, such as e-commerce sites.
  5. Redis: Redis is another memory cache system that allows you to store cached data to make it quickly engaging. It is continuously used for real-time applications and high-performance websites.
  6. NGINX: NGINX is a web server that offers cache features to speed up page loading times. In addition, it is typically used for high-load websites.

5 – Minify the code

Code minification is about removing unnecessary spaces, line breaks, and comments from your code to reduce its size and improve page loading times. Obviously, there are online tools for this. If you use a CMS like WordPress, you can install extensions to minify your HTML, CSS, and JS code. Below are some examples on WordPress: 

  1. WP Minify:  WP Minify is a WordPress plugin that lets you minify the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code of your site. It can also combine multiple files into one to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

  2. Autoptimize: Autoptimize is a WordPress plugin that allows you to minify and combine CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files of your website. It offers other features, such as Gzip compression and caching.

  3. Fast Velocity Minify: Fast Velocity Minify is another WordPress plugin that lets you minify the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code of your site. In addition, it offers features for caching and file compression.

  4. Better WordPress Minify: Better WordPress Minify is a WordPress plugin that allows for minifying the CSS and JavaScript files of your site.

  5. W3 Total Cache: W3 Total Cache is a WordPress caching plugin that offers features for the minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. It is often considered one of the best caching plugins for WordPress.

6 – Use a CDN

CDN (Content Delivery Networks) are networks of servers distributed worldwide. They allow the distribution of the files of your website (images, videos, scripts) from the server closest to the user, which reduces the loading time of the pages.

7 – Optimize the web server

You can also optimize your web server by using techniques such as GZIP compression, which reduces the size of files sent to the browser, or by enabling server-side cache.

8 – Remove unnecessary plugins

Plugins can weigh down your website and slow down page loading times. It is therefore important to remove unnecessary plugins and limit their use to the strictly necessary.

9 – Use a light theme

Heavy themes can slow down your website. It is then crucial to choose a light theme optimized for speed.

10 – Avoid redirects

Redirects can increase page loading time. It is therefore essential to avoid them as much as possible.

By following these tips, you should be able to significantly improve the speed of your website

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Gilblas Ngunte Possi

Gilblas
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