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Do your customers feel like they’re in the 90s when they visit your website? 40% of consumers will leave a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
If you know your site loads slower than 3 seconds, then you know that you’re losing leads. You need to learn how to make web pages load faster.
Continue reading this article to learn how to get your web pages loading faster.
How to Make Web Pages Load Faster – Right Away
Since we want faster websites, why wouldn’t we want to know how to get quick results so we can fix our pages fast? There are simple fixes you can do right now that will help your pages load faster, and here they are:
1. Use the Best Hosting
If you don’t understand website hosting, you may end up picking a lemon of a web host. When you pick a web host that is slow, it is like trying to run in peanut butter. No matter how good your shoes are, you’re still going to be slower than the guy running on land.
When you look at web hosting, you have shared, VPS and dedicated hosting options. VPS stands for virtual private server and is like shared hosting and dedicated hosting had a baby.
With shared hosting, you share resources with other websites. If other websites are hogging the hosting, your website may lag, and this causes big problems. Shared hosting is usually okay for very small websites and is the cheapest option.
Dedicated hosting means that you own or rent the whole server and no one else has access. This is the safest and fastest server but also the most expensive if you’re worried about pricing.
When it comes to VPS, a virtual private server is on a shared server, but you have resources that are only available to you. Since this is a shared server, it is less expensive than a dedicated server but gives you the benefits of one.
VPS is a good option if your site is small to medium-sized and you want quick hosting.
2. Use Optimized Images
If you upload high-resolution photos and serve them from your site, they can take a long time to load. These images bog down your site and cause serious loading problems. Instead of allowing them to bring your site down, it is time to optimize.
Depending on what website platform you are on, there are a few options. If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin that will optimize the images for you. This is one of the fastest ways and why a lot of people love WordPress.
You can also decrease image size before uploading to your site which is very helpful. With this method, you can avoid the problem altogether.
3. WP Users – Not So Many Plugins Please
Yeah, that’s right. We were just talking about plugins. Now, plugins are bad?
No, plugins are not bad, but if you use too many, they can cause your site to load slowly. In some cases, you only need a plug to do a one time task. You should always remove it if you don’t need it anymore.
Look at the list of plugins on your site and see if there are any you can do without. The fewer plugins, the more likely it is that your site will be able to load quickly.
4. Optimize Files
You can optimize your files through gzipping and minification. If you want the best results, you can use the two together.
If you aren’t sure how to do this, you should leave it to a professional as it could cripple your website if you don’t do it right.
5. Cache, Anyone?
Caching is great for repeat visitor’s website load time. Caching stores bits of information on your visitor’s browser so the next time they come to visit, it doesn’t take as long to load.
Since it only works for your repeat visitors, it doesn’t help with load times for the people that are just discovering your website.
6. Get Rid of Baggage
Do you have photos and files stored on your website and you aren’t using them? Anything that you have on your website that you don’t need should be taken off the site.
You don’t want to lag your website with images and other content that isn’t serving you or your visitors. If you don’t have time to go through everything, you can hire someone to find and delete all of the images and other files that aren’t being used.
7. CDN is a Must
A CDN is a content delivery network. This piece of the puzzle can be confusing at times, but I am going to break it down very simple.
Your website is hosted in a specific location.
Let’s say that the location is Dallas, Texas. You have visitors from all over the world. If a visitor in Russia goes to access your website, they have to wait for the information to get to them all the way from Dallas.
If you use a CDN, the CDN stores your website on multiple servers all around the world. When a query comes from anywhere in the world, it determines the location. When it determines the location, it then looks for a server that is closest to that location and serves it up.
While this sounds like a lengthy process, computers are extremely fast, and it happens very quickly.
Get the Help You Need Today
If you’re trying to learn how to make web pages load faster, then you’re either a webmaster working to hone your skills or trying to learn how to work on your site.
Whether you’re a professional or an amateur, we understand these things can be frustrating.
Our business is to make your business easy. We are here to help you make your online business run as smoothly as possible. Contact us today, ask questions and let us help you move your business forward.
