There are many ways to improve your website’s speed in 2022, but we have put together a list of some easy and effective tasks you can do yourself to help your get visitors to your website faster.
It is no surprise that Google favours fast-loading webpages, it is better for your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), your User Experience (UX) and for your conversion rates.
Why? Well, this part is simple. How many times have you tried to load a website and it has taken too long so you abandoned it? Maybe you went to another website instead, or maybe you just gave up on your search.
When you try to load a webpage and it takes too long, it’s a frustrating experience for you as a user, therefore, it is crucial that you make your website load fast to keep your user’s attention and hopefully they convert (buy your product or contact you via a lead form).
So, what are some easy things you can do to create a positive UX on your site?
5 Easy Tasks you can do to Increase your Website’s Speed
As a business owner, there are some easy strategies you can learn to do which make sure your pages load fast online.
1. Image Optimisation
Images are arguably the primary reason why most websites load slowly. Heavy and unoptimised images can easily slow down your pages, creating a poor user experience. Images are such a simple and used asset across all websites, which is why they tend to cause speed issues.
When image file sizes are too large and you have a lot of images across your website’s pages, your web pages will load slowly and create a bad experience for your users. But did you know you can easily reduce your image’s file sizes while keeping a good level of quality? Not only can you do this, but there are also loads of free tools to do this for you.
Therefore, before you upload images on your website, make sure you do the following:
- Make sure the image size is the right size
- Make sure it is a JPG or WebP (unless you need a transparent background)
- Lazy Load
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Make sure the image size is the right size
What do we mean by this? Well, imagine you want to put an image on your website’s homepage. Depending on your web design, your image can be of various shapes and sizes. Commonly, an image will take up half a screen width in size, therefore, you can begin to know what dimensions your image file should be.
If you want to place an image in one specific section that is about 500px wide and 500px high, then your image should be those exact dimensions. Throughout our years as web designers, we have seen this to be the number 1 mistake when users upload images to their websites. They will have an image that is 2000px wide and 2000px in height (which is extremely big) but this image is only used to take a small space up on the webpage. Therefore, make sure that you edit your image’s dimensions to be specific to what you need it for.
There are some tools (paid and free) that can resize images for you. Some of these are:
Make sure it is a JPG or WebP
The type of image file makes a huge difference in the file size and quality of your picture. Unless you want a transparent background, for example, a logo, then you should only stick to using JPG and WebP file types. For transparent images, you will need to use PNG.
Why stick to these file types? Well, JPG file sizes are a lot smaller than PNGs and you can also have control over optimising them, especially when using tools such as Photoshop.
WebP images are also great to use and should be your go-to and they are our recommendation. This type of file is a next-gen image file extension, that Google absolutely loves. They have small file sizes; they keep their picture quality, and they can be used across your website. They are also compatible across all modern web browsers, so you can use them without risk.
Lazy Load your Images
If you haven’t already come across this term lazy load, simply means to load your pictures as and when your user scrolls to them. For example, if you have 100 images on one webpage, there is no need to load every single one of them at the start, this will slow down your website’s speed and take a long time for that page to load.
What lazy load does is it tells the browser to only load the photos that the user can see on their device, as the user scrolls, the other images they come across start to load. This method allows a website’s page to be a lot faster, by optimising when the images load for the user.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
At last resort, you can use a CDN which is the final hammer punch to speeding up your website. What a CDN does is it hosts your images on a “cloud server” so not actually on your server, therefore, it does all the heavy lifting of hosting your images. Your website just loads them in from the cloud server.
A CDN is usually a last resort because it can be pricey and add a lot of extra steps, especially for a website with not too many images. But, for websites that are image-heavy and especially if you have an international user base, using a CDN can be effective.
CDNs, being cloud-based, can serve your pictures quickly and easily to your users across the globe, whereas if they were stored locally on your server, the loading time can increase for users who are further away from your server.
Optimising your Images Summary
Therefore, if there is anything you can do in 2022 to improve your website speed, it is to optimise your images. It is one of the easiest things you can do, there are many options (free and paid) to do it and it is one of the biggest factors in slow-loading websites.
If you still feel like your website does not meet the speed requirements that you need, then you can contact us directly to help you improve your website’s speed.
2. Upgrade your Hosting Server
Every website is hosted on some type of server, this is the platform that allows your web pages to be displayed online for everyone to see. However, this step is often overlooked when people invest in a website project. The type of server and the location of your server can make a huge difference in the speed of your website. Therefore, one core method of improving your website’s speed this year is to make sure it is on a good server.
Some common types of servers are:
- Shared
- VPS
- Cloud
Depending on your website type, your server will fall into one of the above types but they each have different specifications and your website can be negatively affected by them if not chosen correctly.
Shared Servers
Shared servers host many websites on one website server, it is one of the cheapest hosting options because it’s more about quantity than anything else. You essentially share a server with many other people, allowing for cheaper prices. Now, if your website is a small, basic informative one, with not that much traffic, then a shared server, most often than not, is completely fine.
However, if you have a lot of functionality and many monthly users, then a shared server will not be able to provide the necessary resources (such as disk space, CPU, memory etc..) that you need. If your server cannot handle your website, then your website will load very slowly and also it will likely crash your server.
Shared servers are good for:
- Small websites
- Low-traffic websites (monthly users)
- Informative websites (little-to-no functionality)
VPS Servers
VPS servers are a much more closely-knit circuit of websites, which means you are not sharing resources with so many other websites. Additionally, a VPS server offers a lot of flexibility, you can add-on resources as and when you need them. Prices for VPS servers often vary and can be up to €100 per month, depending on your added resources.
For example, if you wish to increase your cores or memory, you can upgrade your VPS server (depending on the hosting company), it is convenient and flexible and can scale up with your website’s growth.
One drawback of a VPS server is that it does have a physical location, therefore, if your website advertises to an international audience then the further away your customer is from your server, the slower your website will be.
VPS Severs are good for:
- Medium/large websites
- Medium/high traffic (monthly users)
- Functionality such as e-commerce or real-estate websites
Cloud Servers
Finally, we have cloud servers, the ultimate server type for a high-performing and fast website. Cloud servers are perfect for companies with an international audience. Your website will be served via a nearby server location to your audience, this helps to reduce server response time and keep your web pages loading fast.
This type of server is usually the most expensive but is usually used for large businesses where this type of investment would be necessary one. Cloud servers can remove any issues with server response times and create a fast-loading experience for your users.
3. File Minification
Websites consist of many types of files that all do a specific job, whether that is to show content, style that content or create some type of functionality. However, a lot of the time, especially when your website is built on a CMS like WordPress, the file sizes can be large and unoptimised.
What does file minification do? Well, it reduces file sizes by compressing them down into smaller files. Now, for one or two files, this will not help speed your website up that much at all. But, if you have a big website with many files and lots of plugins, file minification can significantly improve your website speed.
Some great file minification WordPress plugins are:
4. Cache your Webpages
Another great way to increase your website’s loading times is to make sure you have some sort of “caching” enabled. What does this mean?
Cache temporarily stores your website’s files for your users to quickly and easily reuse them the next time they visit your website. Therefore, when users visit your website for a second time, it will be much faster than the first time because your website stores the files for them to quickly load again. Basically “saving a copy” of your website which makes it faster and more convenient to reuse.
If your company experiences a lot of users every month then it is highly recommended that you have some sort of cache functionality in order to improve your website’s speed for the future of return customers.
Another benefit of having caching is the fact that it also reduces the load on your hosting server. By having locally stored files, your website uses fewer resources to load a webpage if it has been cached, creating a better experience for your users.
We recommend some of the following WordPress plugins for caching:
5. Reduce & Optimise your WordPress Plugins
With the majority of websites being built on WordPress, it is important to refer to the CMS for speed optimisation.
WordPress uses a series of plugins that create some type of functionality, whether that is for e-commerce, to display a map or even an image and text. There are thousands of plugins that do many things for business owners and for their users.
However, it is easy to get caught up in installing plugins to fix any problems or to create solutions on your website. With every plugin installed, you are injecting a series of code all across your website, even if you want a plugin specifically for one page.
Therefore, we 100% recommend that you optimise your plugins and their delivery of them. What does this mean?
Well, it is best to only use plugins that are absolutely essential for your business operations and to regularly update them for greater efficiency. Additionally, you want to make sure each of your web pages is only using plugins needed for that page and nothing extra, this way, your website speed will be improved, and you will not waste resources and loading time of things you do not need.
We highly recommend this plugin Asset CleanUP, it allows you to select only the plugins you need for each page, creating a fast-loading experience for your users across your website.
How to Test the Speed of your Website?
Now you have the knowledge to improve your website speed in 2022, it is time to put it to the test. Before using the above speed optimisation methods on your website, run a test to check the current speed of your web pages and then compare it to a new test after you engage in speed optimisation.
You can test your website in a variety of ways, our favourites are:
- PageSpeed Insights (by Google)
- Lighthouse Test (by Google)
- GTmetrix
Additionally, you can check out our article on how to get high website speed scores and even download a cheat sheet we put together on how to improve your website’s speed.
