How to increase the speed of your website

Who likes to browse a slow website? Exactly, nobody. Less if it is from a mobile device. Web page loading speed is critical to the user experience and is, therefore, a ranking factor for Google.

Optimal website speed also leads to higher conversions, a primary goal of any online business. Why? Apart from the fact that more than half of the visits received by large search engines come from mobile phones -that is, from devices whose capacity does not allow them to easily move very heavy sites- 40% of users abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

However, increasing website speed is a point that few marketers and SEO Managers pay attention to. Do not do the same. Learn how to boost this factor, especially on the mobile version of your site, and get ahead of the competition.

How to increase the speed of your website

Incorporate your site into a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

It is a network of servers located in strategic places around the world. Its function is to store copies of the content of a site to deliver it to users based on their location and other variables that make the response faster.

This translates into an increase in web page loading speed, as it is a solution to the storage system on a single server, which tends to saturate due to excess reasons, such as excess requests at the same time. In the market, you can find several companies that offer this service through plans that adapt to the needs of any company.

Migrate your site to HTTP / 2

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the protocol that allows the transfer of information on the web. The first version was released in 1991 and since then it has evolved remarkably.

Currently, its best-known version is 1.1. Although its performance is not bad, with this it is necessary to wait in line for each of the elements of the website to fully load, which translates into a tedious and fractional experience for the user.

While with the HTTP / 2, launched recently, the exchange of information is much faster and all the components of the page are loaded at the same time. It is enough to see some examples to realize the notable difference in performance between one version and another.

Design an experience for the mobile version of your site and another for the desktop version.

Offering your mobile users a unique, fast, and amazing experience should be a priority. However, most mobile sites have an average load time of 19 seconds, well above the 3 seconds that 53% of visitors wait before leaving pages.

This is because most mobile sites are only reduced versions of the desktop ones, which do not satisfy the needs and demands of users who browse from these types of devices.

Keep in mind that the screens are small on mobile phones and the processing capacity is much less than on a PC. Avoid the use of elements that only slow down the mobile website speed and worsen the user experience, such as long texts, scroll bars, images, and unnecessary ads.

Debug your site code

Some common errors in the code of a site are poor organization, excessive unnecessary lines, lack of updating and the misuse of white space, separation lines, and indentation. This makes it difficult to read and slows down the page load.

You must debug it completely so that each line of code has its reason for being and makes rendering easier. Remember that every second you gain in web page loading speed can make a difference. You can choose good dedicated Wordpress hosting to improve your website speed.

In addition to increasing conversions and getting a higher PageRank score, by increasing the loading speed of the web page you also reduce the bounce rate, generate more leads and get Google to index more pages. According to the study cited above, mobile sites that load in 5 seconds showed:

25% more ad visibility.
70% more than average sessions.
35% lower bounce rates.
They earn up to 2x more revenue from mobile advertising.

Boosting the loading speed of your site is not an option, it is an obligation. The above tips, in addition to traditional techniques like smart media insertion and moderate plugin use, will save you valuable time. Remember that the ideal average is a maximum of 3 seconds.