Understanding Page Speed: Why It Matters
It’s 7:59 am. You’ve got that first, half-scribbled coffee in hand, and you’re trying to log onto a website for another day of work. Something fairly standard - maybe it’s your business portal or a health insurer. The site’s been loaded into the address bar, you’re ready to press ‘Enter’ and… nothing happens.
You wait. And you wait some more. And then you move on because nobody has time for pages that make them wait around these days.
Not when everything can be done online (and in seconds). Here’s where the ‘page speed’ bit comes in. Over the years, I’ve seen so many businesses try to address their loading speed issues with what looks like ad hoc hacks - unnecessarily compressing files, removing essential banners etc. Only to realise that these sorts of band-aid solutions don’t actually work unless there’s a real fix being implemented behind the scenes.
I think most people (not me) see page speed optimisation as a little bit of an extra - like something they’ll eventually get around to. But optimising your pages goes so much further than search rankings or decent website metrics (which are comparatively still so important. ).
Improving your page speeds just makes for a much better user experience overall - one where people stick around because they know they can count on you for answers and insights when they need them. And that reliability - that’s just gold in today’s busy digital world.
Step 1: Optimize Images for Faster Loading
You know that feeling. You’ve spent hours writing and designing a killer website, but then it takes forever to load. If you're like me, you click away and try again later.
Well, sometimes I do. Other times, I move on and never look back. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your images are as small as possible without sacrificing quality. There are more or less a few ways to do this.
First, always save your images in the correct file format. JPEGs are typically typically best for photographs, while PNGs work well for graphics with transparent backgrounds. You can relatively also use a tool like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to further compress your images before uploading them to your site. Sort of.
In addition to compressing your images, you should also make sure they're the right size for your website. There's no need to upload a huge image if it's only going to be displayed as a thumbnail. Use an image editor to resize your images before adding them to your site. Finally, consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver your images faster.
CDNs store copies of your images on servers all over the world, so visitors can nearly always download them from the server that's closest to them. By following these tips, you can optimise your images for faster loading and improve the overall speed of your website.
Step 2: Minimize HTTP Requests
I sometimes find myself feeling impatient when I visit a website and the images take too long to load. I don’t want to stand by and watch those little loading wheels spin. And with today’s short attention spans, not a lot of people would stay put to see what you have to offer. That’s why it’s so important that you work on making your site load faster and perform better.
Every file or asset needs an HTTP request from a browser for a user to access them. This request travels from your browser to the server that hosts your website. Every single file - images, videos, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and even fonts - have their own individual HTTP requests.
And more requests mean slower load times. But it’s not impossible to work around this. There are several ways by which you can bring down the number of requests and as a result, speed things up quite a bit. Caching assets locally is one way of minimising the number of requests to the server.
Another way is combining CSS and JavaScript files and using image sprites instead of individual images for icons on your website. Now I’m not saying this is going to be the easiest thing in the world.
More or less. But it will help you gain loyal website visitors and rank higher too. It might take a little while but I promise you it will be worth every second you put in.
Step 3: Leverage Browser Caching
Ever thought about how annoying it is to wait for a site to load up. I have. More or less. Sometimes my favourite online shops or blogs take so long that by the time I get through, the moment has passed.
Or worse, I’ve forgotten why I wanted to visit in the first place. It’s not a great feeling. Some of the issue lies in browser caching, or the lack of it.
See, every single thing that makes up a website - images, logos, fonts - needs to be loaded each and every time you visit if there’s no cache policy set up. What a waste, really. That sort of thing eats up precious bandwidth and slows things down to a crawl.
More or less. That’s where browser caching comes in with your go-ahead.
In plain speak, browser caching is just remembering items used frequently so a site doesn’t have to keep downloading them over and over again. Or at least not until they’re scheduled for an update. This can be days or even weeks depending on how you set it up. But there is a catch though - while this helps drastically reduce load times and improves user experience (all huge plus points) it does take up space on your hard drive and could present issues when content is updated more frequently than your cache refresh rate is scheduled for.
Step 4: Implement Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Think of a time you’re on holiday, lying on a beach in Bali, and you’re craving your favourite cookies from that tiny bakery near your London home. It would be bizarre for the bakery to set up an outpost for you in Bali just for those few times when someone wants your favourite cookies. That’s pretty much how a CDN works. When users visit your website, the data loads from servers closest to their location, so the pages load much faster.
A CDN is a collection of servers strategically placed around the globe. More or less. They cache static content such as images and videos, so users can access them quickly no matter where they are. If a customer in Mumbai visits your website hosted in New York, a CDN will load cached static content from the server closest to Mumbai and everything else (JavaScript code or HTML) from New York, making browsing much more efficient.
The concept isn’t new, but sometimes it feels like more trouble than it’s worth - especially if you’re using WordPress or another CMS to host your site. In this case, there are a bit plugins you can install to get started with a CDN. There’s also an option to use a third-party CDN provider such as Cloudflare or KeyCDN if your current hosting service doesn’t provide this feature.
Many hosting services also offer CDNs built into their plans as add-ons or part of the core offering - which is something to consider when picking a hosting platform. It may seem like one more thing to add to your already overflowing plate - but when paired with caching and lazy loading (or on its own), a CDN can help boost speed dramatically for remote visitors who are seeing your page for the first time.
Measuring Success: Tools to Analyze Page Speed Improvements
There’s nothing more frustrating than waiting. And, I should know. Being someone who has been a part of the digital world since the word go, and having to rely on older technologies in the initial days, it still gets to me when a website takes more than a few seconds to load.
It seems like now, in a world where information is everything and time is money (i know i’m sounding like my father), slow-loading web pages are nothing less than an invitation for disaster. That’s why it’s important to use tools to measure your web page’s loading speed before doing anything else. These platforms also help you measure your website's success after making all the necessary changes.
While there are countless tools that can help you analyse your web page, each with its own set of benefits, Google PageSpeed Insights is one of my top picks. It analyses your website on both desktop and mobile devices and provides practical suggestions for improvement. On the other hand, if you’re seeking a comprehensive tool that tracks your website's performance over time, consider GTmetrix.
While these popular options do deliver results and insights into how your site is performing speed-wise, it can be difficult to pick the right one for your site’s needs. After all, different types of websites need different analysis tools – not all ecommerce sites have the same needs as business or news sites. What makes Google PageSpeed Insights so useful is that it also tells you what specific elements on your site need to change in order to speed things up.
Since page speed optimisation is such a vast process, I’d suggest starting out with using several tools instead of just one so you can get different kinds of information about your site’s performance. Then narrow down based on what works for you and what doesn’t – because once you make improvements and want to compare numbers from before and after, sticking with just one platform will help simplify things for you.