SPEED IS CRITICAL #INFOGRAPHIC
How slow is your website when accessed by a typical user with an average Internet connection? Find out now: Check out Google Webmaster Tools, or Alexa and type your website URL, or do a test on GTMetrix and see where your page load times is compared to your top competitors. If you are getting Ds and Fs on GTMetrix and if Alexa and GWT say your site is slower than 90% of the other websites, you are positively in trouble.
Google includes something called “Page speed” in their ranking algorithm. Many are aware of this fact, but few have taken any action to find out what it means for their business or actively worked on improving their website’s response times. Today we’ll find out how an improved page load speed can improve your online business.
Website Speed Is Critical: Tips To Make Your Website Snappy via @SingleHop
Keeping up with the health of your website is crucial. Whether you are running a online blog or a business, no visitor is going to hang around a slow website. SingleHop, a cloud computing company, has put together a tips and best practices to keep your site snappy.
Share this Image On Your Site
Speed Is Critical
If your website takes too long to load, you'll loose visitors, influence, and sales.
Fast Fact: 1/4 of visitors will abandoned a page in less than 4 seconds if it doesn't load.
We've put together this set of best practices to help you keep your site snappy.
Start Here
Test
These tools will help you test your site to see what speed problems it might have.
- Google Pagespeed Insights and Google Search Console.
- Pingdom Website Speed Test.
- WordPress: Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast (incorporates Pagespeed Insights).
- Drupal: Speedt.
After testing, there are front end solution to increase the loading speed of your website.
Frontend Solutions
Re Design & Reorganize
- Refresh and reorganize content.
- Simplify the design.
- Use fewer "widgets".
- Go fully responsive.
Plug Out
- Less than 25% of sites use flash today vs. nearly 50% in 2011.
- Replicate large flash plugins with HTML5 instead for quicker load times.
Optimize Your Images
- Use several images sizes with appropriate HTML5 markup to accommodate responsive design - or consider SVG (scalable vector graphic) format.
- Use CSS styling for backgrounds and borders rather than decorative images.
Social Smarts
- Using JavaScript - heavy plugins to manage social sharing adds bloat and extra HTTP calls.
- Use share buttons that require minimal scripting.
- Load social media scripts asynchronously.
Nearly 60% of mobile users expect sites to be as fast on their phone as a desktop or laptop.
There are also back-end solutions to increase site loading speed and this include Content Caching e.g using plugins to create static content that speeds up server processing and delivery. Some of such plugins include W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.
Backend Solutions
Content Caching
- Use plugins to create static content that speeds up server processing and delivery.
- WordPress:
- W3 Total Cache.
- W3 Super Cache.
- Drupal:
- Page- and block-level caching are built in List of performance-related modules.
Minify
- Stripping unnecessary characters reduces overall file size without affecting the page display.
- WordPress:
- Better WordPress Minify
- WP Super Minify
- Drupal:
- Speedy
- Minify
ONE Second Improvement = 7% Increase in Conversion
Other back-end solutions include hosting content on CDN Server, Private Cloud Hosting etc.
Content Delivery Network
- Stores content on servers close to visitor's physical locations.
- Google Hosted Libraries is the most popular CDN service.
- Only 11% of websites currently host HTML files on CDN servers.
Scalability
- Have the ability to increase resources as your site grows to avoid downtime.
- Cloud platforms let you scale infrastructure according to your site's needs.
Private Cloud Hosting
- Find a custom server solution for your business needs.
- Use SSL encryption to keep customers safe.
This Infograph is made available by SINGLEHOP - the industry's fastest growing provider of hosted private cloud and on-demand servers.
