Do you know that a 1-second delay in your website speed can cause a serious drop in page views, customer satisfaction, and even conversions?
Certainly no website owners would like to see a drop in these important things. So is there really a legit way to improve website speed? However, how to build a faster website without any specific knowledge or skills?
We’re pleased to present to you some of the tested and proven ways to improve your website speed:
1- Enable Browser Caching
2- Use Appropriate Image Size
3- Enable Hotlinking Protection
4- Keep your Softwares/Plugins Up-To-Date
5- Remove Unused Software or Plugins
6- Optimize Image Size Without Damaging Quality
1- Enable Browser Caching
You can see a significant increase in your website speed and give your visitors a better browsing experience by enabling browser caching.
Browser caching is known as a process of storing HTML, CSS, PHP, and other files for an easier and faster access.
This makes sure that the database does not have to retrieve all files every time the same person visits the website.
By doing so, it can reduce the number of times the server has to retrieve the file, making the website take shorter time to load.
When your website has enabled full caching, your website loading time can drop from 2.4 seconds to 0.9 seconds.
If you’re a WordPress user, the easiest and fastest method for you to enable caching is to install a plugin in your WordPress account.
W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are some of the well known plugins that can boost your website speed tremendously despite the volume of traffic you have for your website.
For Joomla users, browser caching can be easily done in your Joomla dashboard.
1- Go to System > Global Configuration
2- Click to open the drop-down menu
3- Choose the option ON – Conservative Caching
4- Click Save
5- Go to Extensions > Plugin Manager
6- Enable Cache Plugin
As for Drupal users, Varnish Cache is a highly recommended software to leverage browser caching.
2- Use Appropriate Image Size
The images on your website play a huge role as they make your website look attractive to your visitors.
Unfortunately, the images on your website can also be the reason that causes your website to slow down.
One good example is when you upload a large image (1,800px x 1,800px) to your website and resize it to a smaller image (100px x 100px).
Does this look familiar to you? This is not a good practice as it can cause your website to load slower than usual.
In this case, if you plan to show an image that is 100px x 100px on your website, it is best to upload an image that is exactly 100px x 100px.
3- Enable Hotlinking Protection
Hotlinking is an unethical and wrong but is still done by many people today.
Hotlinking occurs when someone embeds an image from your site into their website. It may seem not to be a big deal, but it can seriously affect your website speed.
This is because when the embedded image is viewed on someone else’s site, it is consuming your server resources, bringing a negative impact on your bandwidth as well as your website speed.
Luckily, this can be prevented by enabling hotlinking protection through your cPanel account.
1- Login to your cPanel.
2- Click “Hotlink Protection” on the security section.
3- Click “Enable.”
4- Done.
4- Keep your Softwares/Plugins Up-To-Date.
It may sound weird, but as a matter of fact, most of the updates in plugins would typically offer bug fixes, speed improvement, new features, security enhancements, or a mixture of the above.
In addition, WordPress core updates often offer new features that involve allowing plugins to perform better at a faster speed.
By making sure that your plugins and WordPress account is updated, you can enjoy a faster website speed.
5- Remove Unused Software or Plugins
As a matter of fact, every plugin you install will cost you resources to use it. Unfortunately, your site will face a slower loading time if your plugins are taking away too much resources.
With excessive plugins, it can even cause serious security issues to your website.
With this said, it is best to lower down the number of plugins you have for your websites and uninstall those plugins that you are no longer using.
6- Optimize Image Size Without Damaging Quality.
Nevertheless, you can see a significant drop in website loading speed by optimizing your image size.
When it comes to optimizing your image size, it does not mean that the quality of your image will be affected.
You can still have a high quality image even if you reduce your image size.
TinyPNG is a cool tool that can tremendously reduce your image size while ensuring that your image quality is still the same.
If you’re a WordPress user and do not wish to perform the extra step, WP Smush is the best choice for you.
With WP Smush, your image will be automatically compressed when it is uploaded to your media library.
As for Joomla or Drupal users, Kraken is a great tool that you should check it out.
