
Top 10 Tips to Improve Website Speed for Better UX
A website is the first impression of your brand or a business. When someone visits a website, it is important that it opens quickly and works well. If a website speed is slow & takes too long to load, the person might leave and go somewhere else. This can make a big difference between getting or losing a customer. This can also hurt the company’s business and reputation.
But if you make a website load faster, it can help the company by bringing in more visitors, making the website more popular, and getting people who are interested in the products or services. All of this can lead to more sales. In this blog, we will share some tips on how to make your website work better and load faster.
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Key Tips to Improve Your Website Speed For Better User Experience
After you have tested the speed of your website, you can begin with the optimization of the site. There are several ways to make your website load faster. Here are some of the key tips and tricks:
1. Optimize the Size of Images on Your Website
Having lots of photos and graphics on your website can make it look amazing. However, these pictures are usually big files which can make your website speed slow to load. The best way to make sure your website stays fast is to make the image files smaller without changing how they look. You can use tools like ImageOptim, JPEGmini, or Kraken to compress the image files. You can also use special HTML codes called the <secret> and <size> attributes. These adjust the size of your images.
2. Reduce the Number of Plugins
Plugins are small tools added to websites to give them extra features. They can be super helpful, but if you have too many plugins, they can make your website speed slow. Each plugin needs extra resources to work. Go through the list of plugins and delete any that you do not use to keep your site running quickly. You can also check which plugins are slowing your website down by running tests.
3. Use Website Caching
Caching is like storing a copy of your site. By saving a copy of your website, you can avoid having to start from scratch each time a visitor comes to your site. The website will show the stored version which is much faster. The way you set up caching depends on what platform your website uses. For WordPress, you can use plugins like W3 Total Cache or W3 Super Cache. If you are using a VPS or a server, you can set up caching in the server settings.
4. Optimize Your Database in CMS
If you use a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, it can get messy over time. This happens because things like blog posts and comments are stored in a big database. To fix this, you can clean up and organize your database. Some CMS systems have plugins that help with this in order to optimize your website speed.
5. Detect 404 Errors
When someone tries to access a page that is no longer available, they receive a 404 error. You should check your website for these errors and fix them. There are special tools and plugins that can help you find these broken links.
6. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is like having a team of servers in different places around the world. The CDN delivers the material from the nearest server to the user when they visit your website. This means your website speed will be faster, no matter where your visitors are. Using a CDN can be expensive, but it generally supports to speed up your website.
7. Minimize the Number of JavaScript and CSS Files
JavaScript and CSS are the codes that make your website work and look good. If you have a lot of these files, it can make your website slower because the browser has to load each file one by one. To make your website faster, try to combine all your JavaScript and CSS files into one file for each. This reduces the number of things the browser has to load. You can use special tools to combine and make these files smaller.
8. Reduce Redirects
Redirects are like road signs that tell people to go another way. They can slow down your website because every time someone is redirected, their browser has to ask for a new page. To make your website faster, try to reduce the number of redirects. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to check your website for redirects and remove the unnecessary ones.
9. Reduce the Use of Web Fonts
Web fonts are great and make your website look stylish. But they also have a disadvantage, they can make your website slower because the computer has to load them from the web. To make things faster, try to use newer formats like WOFF2 and only include the font styles and characters you really need.
10. Use Prefetching Techniques
Prefetching is a smart trick where your website loads things in advance, even before the visitor clicks on them. Modern browsers can do this automatically, but developers can also tell the browser what to load first to make the website feel faster. Prefetching is helpful if you know what a user may do next such as clicking on a link or opening a page.
Conclusion
Loading speed is an important part of how a website or app works. People want things to load quickly and work smoothly when they are online. If a website or app takes too long to open, it can be really frustrating. So, designers have to think about how to make things load faster and be more easy to use.
Web Glaze Services, a leading digital marketing company in Dubai, UAE has expert developers who incorporate these strategies when building a website. We make sure that the website not only looks well but performs well too. Hence, businesses or brands can trust us with their website development needs to boost their brand recognition across the world.