How To Optimize Website Speed

Ever been to a website and left simply because it’s so slow no matter how good it looks? I am sure you have, I know I certainly have.

Unfortunately while more and more people are using faster Internet connections, there seems to be less emphasis on optimizing pages for faster load times. However there are still many people using slow connections and your website may not load as quickly for them. Furthermore, there are now a multitude of open source tools and easy to use systems, where novice web builders can create their own websites; these tools are usually packed with widgets and scripts which create nasty javascript-heavy pages that take a long time to load. Most of these novice users have no idea what affect these fancy widgets are having on their website and the user experience.

This article discusses how important website speed is, what causes slow loading websites, how you can monitor web page load times and how you can improve it.

Why Is Quick Web page Loading Important?

The most popular websites today usually load very quickly and they actively monitor download speeds, page load times and benchmark pages to make sure their website is quick, but how important is it to have a quick website? Should you be worried if your website is not the fastest site in the world? Well, Yes and No. If it is your personal homepage, it may be a big deal to you. If you are trying to run a business, or offer people important information, this can be very important.

Here’s just a few reasons web page speed is important:

• Faster pages make a better user experience. Load times are generally only noticed when they’re not good, most people will NOT think, “oh this site loads quickly!”, but many will think, “DAM this site is slow!”.
• Slow web pages can potentially affect search engine rankings. Google have suggested that they’re paying attention to load times when they’re indexing. Slow pages could potentially be costing you a front page listing on Google.
• Slow websites lose money. Websites lose money when users click away from a slow-loading website. Think about how many times you leave a website because it’s too slow!
• Not everyone has a T1, cable modem, or ISDN connection to the Internet. In fact, there are still a large number of surfers with modems less than 56K. With slower connections to the Internet, the user experience for your website can be entirely different to what you envisage, so we must see to it that our websites load as quickly as possible, without losing anything important.

How Quickly Does Your Website Load?

It’s obvious that you need to have your web pages load as quickly as possible, but what is considered quick will generally depend on the type of site you operate and how many users you have. For example, e-commerce websites have more images and use a database back-end, so will take longer to render a web page. Websites with many users and dynamic content with frequent updates, loads of plug-ins, and generally lots of functionality,will also load more slowly, when compared to a simple website with 5 static pages.

So how do we monitor website speed? Well, there are some great tools on the Internet for analysing the speed of your website and give you all sorts of handy stats for determining user experience and trouble shooting website problems. One of my favourite websites is Pingdom where you can do a quick test of speed for free, or sign up for loads of interesting stats about your website. Another one of my favourites is Web Page Analyzer – A free web page analysis tool which calculates page size, composition, and download time.

Causes of Slow Loading Web Pages

There are a number of reasons your website may be slow:

1. Unoptimized Images – This is usually the most common reason for slow websites; there are lots of images, all of which are full-size and uncropped. Don’t add unnecessary complicated web graphics on your web pages, best to keep pages simple. Try to impress your visitors with content-rich web pages and wise web graphics instead of displaying only images and fancy color schemes. Keep images to a minimum, keep them small and if you don’t know how to use tools like Photoshop try the dynamic drive image optimiser.
2. Poor Web Hosting Service - Your website could be slow through no fault of your own or any fault of your web designer and developer. Choose web hosting carefully and if you are not happy move your website to an alternative, it could save you thousands in lost revenue from a website that is slow, or worse still always down. My favourite hosting provider is HeartInternet, either get in touch with us directly for a web hosting quote that won’t be beaten, or visit their website directly and check them out:
   
3. Use of Server-Intensive Dynamic Scripts -Dynamic websites, such as those that generate their pages from data stored in databases, are slower than simple HTML websites. On low-traffic websites the delay is not usually noticed, but as a website increases in size and popularity, speed can bebome a problem. So if you have a website built on a CMS and your visitors are increasing then to remedy any potential problems try caching web pages. Most CMS tools have plugins that can be easily installed to cache pages, though you may have to speak to your web developer for assisitance. Caching enables you to store copies of frequently accessed dynamic documents and allows files to be accessed more quickly.
4. No Web Page Compression – Another way to speed up your website is to compress your pages. See this useful article for how to enable gzip. Unless you can get to your back end code and know your way round php and html, I suggest you ask your web developer to do this for you.
5. Too Much Flash -Flash is a great tool for adding interactivity or animation to a website, but it is also the cause of slow loading pages. Too much flash, or a site built entirely in flash, may have consequences for your download times, so keep it to a minimum. Keep special effects and animations to a minimum to enable quick loading of your web pages.
6. Bulky Code - Another common culprit is bulky code. The larger the file size of each document, the longer it will take to load. Make sure you optimise your web pages, keep code clean, remove unnecessary white space, avoid inline styles, use external CSS and Javascript docs, use CSS and DIV based layouts not tables, and use tools to clean up your code such as an online HTML optimiser.
7. External Embedded Media – If you add external videos, slide shows, etc… to your website, your site will be only as fast as the website from where it is coming. Say for example you add a youtube video to your homepage and youtube is slow that day, well that can impact your site too. Think about things like SHARE THIS code added to bottom of web pages, so people can share the page with friends via email, facebook, twitter etc. These are often hosted on external sites too and can also slow your web pages down if they experience problems.
8. SPAM – If you suspected spam is slowing your website down, try spam proofing all web forms by adding captchas or other deterrents.

How To Improve Download Times

A good start for speeding up your website is to look at the list of causes above and see if there is anything you can improve.  Basically, what you really need to consider is: does everything on your web pages offer value to the customer? If not, remove it! If you have some fancy widget showing some stats, or some cleverly designed flash image, they will look great, but are they slowing your website down? If so, is your customer experience being negatively affected, more so, are these fancy extras causing you to loose customers and therefore money?

In conclusion, set realistic goals for your websites page load times. Remember e-commerce type sites will be slower simply by nature, listing lots of info taken from a database with lots of pictures can take its toll on the speed of your website, so set realistic targets, your page will never be as quick as a static 5 page website. Take into account all of the pieces of software needed to create the pages on your website and constantly work on different aspects to achieve performance gains.

You may also like to read:

• Google wants you to speed up your servers
• How to Optimize Your Site for Better Loading Time
• 10 Ways to Lose Website Visitors!
• How To Get Your Visitors Returning Back To Your Website
• Twelve Things Most Sites Need – Part II

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