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How to Speed Up Your Website


Did you know that the companies which manage to boost their website's loading speeds see significant increases in revenue? Here's what you need to do if you want to make your site load faster, and thus improve its conversion rate.

speed up website

Start by minimizing the number of HTTP requests. According to Yahoo Developer Network, 80% of the end-user response time is spent downloading page elements: images, scripts, and so on. The browser will make a new HTTP request anytime it needs to download a new image or a script, for example. This means that website pages which utilize simple designs, loading fewer elements, have the potential to run much faster. So, use an image or two per page at most, combine several scripts into a single one, merge all your CSS files into a single stylesheet and you will see a significant speed boost.


Don't forget to reduce image sizes. E-commerce stores owners need to use lots of images, but all those pictures need to be compressed. Begin by choosing the proper image size. Many people shoot high-quality photos of their products, and then upload them without resizing those images. Don't make the same mistake; always choose pictures that have a width of 1,000 pixels or less. Also, be sure to choose the proper file format; JPGs, PNGs or GIFs can provide better results, depending on the actual image content.


Try to reduce time to first byte (TTFB) to a minimum. TTFB is the amount of time which passes since the browser makes its first request, and until it receives the first byte of data from the destination server. To fix this issue, you will have to work with your domain name system (DNS) provider, because slow DNS speeds will kill your site. Search the web for "fastest DNS provider" or something along these lines, and then test the services that are provided by the companies which show up on the list. You will discover that the response time of those domain name system server providers can range from two milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds.


Server response times are essential as well. While the shared hosting option is inexpensive, its list of pros stops here. If you run a real business, you may need to use a dedicated server, which will allow you to keep up with seasonal traffic spikes and reduce TTFB. A much more affordable alternative is to use one of the numerous cloud-based hosting offers that are usually powered by Microsoft's or Amazon's infrastructure.


Responsible web developers will always minify their code, removing all the characters that aren't needed. And while most of them prefer to keep their HTML, CSS and JavaScript source files nicely formatted, that extra white space leads to more bytes that need to be loaded, thus reducing the website loading speed.

Implement asynchronous CSS and JavaScript file loading. Scripts that run synchronously can only load sequentially; therefore, if a certain script – maybe a plugin which counts the number of likes for a particular article – runs really slow, the browser will need to wait until that script has done its job. On the other hand, with asynchronous loading the browser can download and run several scripts in parallel, without having to wait for any of them to finish.


Enable CSS and HTML file compression using Gzip. Most modern web servers support Gzip compression, so they'll be able to send your browser compressed files, which use less data. Then, the browser will unzip the files on your end, because this can be done really fast on today's powerful computers.


Make sure that browser caching is activated. If you visit a particular website regularly, many of its digital assets are already downloaded and stored in a "cache" folder, on your computer's hard drive. So, it makes a lot of sense to have those resources loaded straight from the cache, rather than being downloaded from the server once again. It is true that there may be some new resources on your news site, but my guess is that people who have visited it in the past have about 90% of its digital content stored on their hard drives.