When it comes to a good website, success is synonymous with its aesthetic, features, functionality, contents, and most importantly – its loading speed. It’s the overall traffic of a website, which mainly matters in deciding whether or not it will stay infallible in the long run. Gone are the days, when a website’s user engagement was solely dependent on its catchy visual. The millennial audiences love coming back to those websites that don’t take too long to load. Hence, no matter how big a brand is, it’s mandatory for every company to have well-furbished and fast-loading websites.
Follow these easy yet effective methods to make everyone sing praises for your ‘fast and fabulous’ website –
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Chuck Unnecessary Plugins
Imagine yourself staring at a website, which is taking ‘all the time in the world.’ Even if it belongs to your favorite brand, you would end up abandoning it right away! If you don’t want your own website to pay such a hefty price, then remove as many plugins as possible. Plugins are usually used to ensure seamless integration between a website and the transforming visual element. The more plugins, the slower the website is. Let only the premium plugins stay on your site. Bid adieu to the less important ones.
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Boost Browser Caching
Leveraging browser caching is another sure-fire way of increasing the loading speed of a website. When visitors land on your website for the first time, the major components of its web pages are generally stored in the hard drive or temporary storage. This means that their browsers will automatically get access to your site without having to provide the server with any HTTP request. Also, the audience can open it instantly while visiting your website the next time.
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Pick Small Images
We tend to judge a book by its cover, aren’t we? Probably, this is the reason why most website designers spend huge bucks on their websites’ visual representations. The importance of visually-catchy images, videos, or GIFsis paramount when it comes to adding to a website’s ‘look.’ Did you know that the big images can slow down your web pages in leaps and bounds? Hence, consider adorning your website with just a handful of images, which go well with your brand’s motto, products, etc. Resize the solutions of big images and compress them as per the need. You can use image-compressing tools to seal the deal, as well.
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Restrict 301 Redirects
Transforming the structure of a website is simply unavoidable. This means that the URLs of your web page will change automatically. Redirect all the clicks from an old URL with the newer ones so that your visitors don’t get confused with many other URLs. The 301 redirects always ensure that the old URL works smoothly even though it does not exist technically. This may slow down the loading time of a web page as this process produces links in a chain, which your browser should pass through to land on your new URL.
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Say Yes to 3rd Party Hosting
A website brimming with larger files containing video clips or images is more susceptible to slow loading. A website’s loading time reaches another height when a shared server is used to host the images and video clips. This issue could be solved by sharing the video or image files on any external hosting platform like Vimeo, YouTube, and the likes. Subsequently, these files can be embedded on a website along with a less complex code, thus boosting the loading speed of a website.
Time for a Quick Wrap –
Always remember that the loading speed of a website can impact your user experience, search ranking, and conversion. You must explore the above-mentioned strategies to shoot up your website’s loading speed, thus adding to your brand growth to newer heights of success.
