6 Ways Marketers Can Improve Page Load Time on Their Website
Page load
time is one of the many factors that contribute to deciding your Ad Rank.
Therefore, you need to abide by the Google algorithm and pay attention to your
website’s page load time.
Before I got
acquainted with digital marketing and all of the ingredients that aid in
cooking the perfect website, I blamed my Cox bundle for the
Internet whenever there was a delay in page load time. However, later I learned
that the Internet is not always to be blamed.
Here are ways
by which marketers can work on their page load time:
Optimize Images
Talking of
bandwidth hogs, images are the first thing that will pop-up in a marketers’ or
web developers’ brains. You need to optimize your images so that your website’s
pages load well within time. A page should not take more than 2-5 seconds.
Anything more than that will annoy the visitor who will navigate away from your
website.
The first way
through which you can optimize your image is by scaling them appropriately. The
scaling bit should be done before you upload the image on your website. After
scaling, you should compress your images as well. You will find plenty of
online tools that will help you to compress your images.
Browser Caching
Another thing
that annoys the visitors and affects your page load time is asking your
customers to download the same image every time they visit your website. This
does not only imply to images but all content that needs downloading. You
should enable browser caching. This allows some of your data to get stored
temporarily on the visitor’s computer.
Enabling this feature means the customers will not have to face any inconvenience when they
visit your page again. However, the length of time for which the data gets
stored depends on your cache settings as well as the visitor’s browser
configuration.
Compression
Compressing
your files before uploading them on your website are like putting all your
documents in a zip folder. Compression not only reduces your page’s size by
many folds but it also increases your page’s speed. According to research,
compression is capable of waving off 50-70% of data from your CSS and HTML
files.
Compression
settings are server-based. Therefore, it is upon you to decide how you
implement it keeping your webserver in mind.
Optimization of CSS
The CSS for a
website loads before people even see the site. So, the longer it takes for CSS
to load, the longer the visitors will have to wait for the website to load. If
you optimize your CSS, it will load faster. Which in turn means that the
website will load fast for visitors to view.
To optimize
your CSS, you will need to ask yourself if you use the whole of it. In case you
don’t, get rid of the extra code that is lying in your files. Because every bit
of data that you add to your files (which is not necessary) will add to your
page load time.
Apart from
getting rid of the extra code, you should minimize the CSS files as well. The
extra spaces in your stylesheets do nothing but add to your file size.
Minimizing the CSS files the removal of these extra spaces.
Keep Scripts Below the Fold
JavaScript files usually load after the complete page does.
However, if you place those files before all of your content, the JavaScript
files will load before the rest of the content. The simple solution to this is
to place your JavaScript files at the bottom of your page. By doing so, most of
your site will load before the JavaScript files do.
Simple Website Design
Do not delve
into complex website designs. They may look fancy to you, but the customers do
not care about it. All they want is a website that loads well within time.
Simple website design will not only save you money but also earn you more
customers.
Simple
website design also improves the User Experience for travel shoppers. No
wonder, simple website designs fall under the ‘most desirable’ category.
If you try to work on the above-mentioned tips,
you can improve your website’s page load time. Because customers are becoming
more aware now. This should be a warning for you. Just like I don’t blame my Cox Internet service anymore for any page loading delays, I am sure
many more don’t. Therefore, it is binding upon you to pay attention to your
website design (in case it is not optimized enough) to please your customers.
