7 ways to improve your page loading speed

One of the crucial factors that influence your site’s performance is page loading speed. However, this metric can be quite difficult to improve, especially if you don’t understand how it works and what factors influence it. Before you learn how to lower website bounce rate and increase user engagement, it’s crucial that your web pages load as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. If your website is optimized for speed, you’ll not only boost the user experience but you’ll also help improve your search engine ratings. In this article, we’ll explain why it’s important and how to improve your page loading speed in 7 simple ways.

What is page loading speed?

Page loading speed is the amount of time it takes for your content to load when someone visits a page on your website. Although it’s an essential part of web performance, it’s not to be confused with website speed. The page loading speed refers to the loading speed of a specific page.

There are plenty of factors that influence the page speed and here are the three most important ones:

• The number of images, videos, or other media files placed on the specific page.
• The plugins and theme that you have installed on your website. 
• Coding and server-side scripts of your website.

Why is page loading speed important?

In the internet world, every second counts when it comes to page loading speed. The slower your website is, the higher is the probability that the visitor will leave right away. In fact, Google states that if the page takes over 5 seconds to load, the probability of a bounce increases by 90%.

In simple words, if your pages don’t load within a few seconds, it will have a negative impact on the user experience and make visitors leave your side. It can also hurt your ability to drive engagement and improve your conversion rate.

Another reason why page loading speed is important is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Namely, when ranking a website, Google and other search engines take loading speed into consideration.

Your page loading speed can massively influence consumers’ perception of your brand and make it seem unprofessional and even unreliable. So in order to attract more visitors and improve your website’s ranking, it’s important to improve your page loading speed. Further in this article, we’ll reveal 7 ways to do this.

How to improve your page loading speed?

Now that you know what page speed is and why is it important, it’s time to learn how to improve it. Below, you’ll find 7 simple ways to help you achieve this.

#1 Choose a hosting solution that’s performance-optimized

One of the biggest factors in your website’s performance, as well as management, is the hosting provider you’ve chosen. In fact, this is where many people make a mistake and choose mediocre hosting in order to save on a lower monthly rate.

However, this is not something you want to save money on. Chap hosting usually means poor performance due to overloaded servers and resources shared between multiple websites. Thus make sure to research and choose a provider that doesn’t offer shared hosting.

#2 Reduce the number of redirections

Having too many redirects on your website can negatively influence your page loading time. Each time a page redirects somewhere else, it delays the HTTP request and response process and consequently, slows down page loading time and lowers the user experience.

Of course, there are redirects that might be necessary. For example, when you’re moving to a new domain. But all unnecessary redirects should be eliminated as it will help improve your page loading speed.

#3 Compress your images

Images are crucial to enhance the appearance of your web pages and boost the quality of your content. However, if you upload images that are too large, they can slow down your pages.

So in order to increase page loading speed, make sure to compress and optimize your images before uploading them. This will help pages on your website load much quicker and the best part is that there are a lot of plugins you can use for this purpose.

#4 Delete unnecessary plugins

If you have too many plugins installed on your website it can negatively influence its performance and page loading speed. On top of that, old and outdated plugins are a security threat, too which is another good reason to eliminate them.

So one of the simplest ways to boost your page loading time is to go through installed plugins and start decluttering. Make sure to disable and delete all plugins you no longer use. Also, check if there are plugins that have overlapping functionalities and features and get rid of one.

#5 Cache your pages to improve your page loading speed

One of the simplest, yet most effective ways to boost the speed of your web pages is caching. It stores copies of your website’s files and thus minimizes the work needed for the server to generate and serve pages to visitors’ browsers.

There are plenty of simple ways to cache your web pages. For instance, you can do it at the server level and let your host handle your website caching for you. Alternatively, if you have a WordPress website, you can use different plugins that make caching your website quick and easy.

#6 Enable browser caching

Browser caching enables the browser to store a variety of information. For example, stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and similar. This is done so that browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page each time a user visits it.

#7 Take advantage of the content delivery network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN)  or “content distribution network” is a network of servers that can help you improve your page loading speed. The way it works is that hosts and delivers copies of your website’s static content from servers located all over the globe.

However, CDN doesn’t work instead of your host, it works with it. You can leverage CDN and use it in addition to the server that hosts your primary website. CDN basically reduces the distance data requests have to travel between browsers and your host’s servers and thus speeds up your page loading time.

The bottom line

We hope our article helped you understand how to improve your page loading speed and why is it important. However, this is just the start as there are plenty of ways to attract more visitors and successfully turn them into your customers. One of the best ways is to use the ConvertMore callback widget and get more leads from the ads you are already paying for.