To improve your website speed, there are several things you can do. These include compression, resizing, hosting media files on a content delivery network, and enabling caching. Google recommends a TTFB of 200 ms or less. You can test your site’s TTFB by using the developer tools in Chrome or another third-party tool. The speed of your Internet connection can also affect your response time.
Compression
One of the best ways to improve website speed is to compress the website’s files. The average web browser sends a request to a server, which in turn searches for and displays the website’s files. These files are often large and can take a long time to load. Compression can help make these files smaller and faster to download, which improves website speed.
Compression improves website speed by decreasing the size of the files used to create the page. Ideally, a web page should be under 100KB in size. A larger page will take much longer to load. If a website is over 100KB, it will be sluggish. Compression is the best way to reduce the file size for each page.
Resizing
Using a combination of resizing and compression can help your website load faster. Compression reduces image file sizes, allowing your website to load faster. Resizing images reduces disk space and bandwidth usage. To increase loading speed, try to minimize the size of your images and videos.
Hosting media files on a content delivery network
Hosting media files on a content delivery network (CDN) improves website speed by reducing latency. This refers to the time between a request for data and a response. The longer the distance between the server and the user, the higher the latency. Content delivery network servers are located near the users to reduce the time between request and response.
Websites that take too long to load can frustrate prospective customers and drive them away. Many factors contribute to this, including JavaScript issues, unoptimized images, excessive flash content, and too many HTTP requests. Bad hosting may also contribute to a website’s slowness. A content delivery network (CDN) is a great way to improve website speed and customer satisfaction.
Enabling caching
There are several ways to speed up your website, and one of them is by enabling caching. Using HTTP headers and caching software, you can save your website’s assets. This not only helps your website load faster, but it also saves energy and reduces your carbon footprint. However, you should avoid caching sensitive data such as customer data.
Caching works by storing your site’s content in the visitor’s browser to reduce the number of requests it makes to your server. For a typical website, this can reduce the load time by up to 40-60%. It will also save a significant amount of time for returning visitors. Depending on your website type, you can enable or disable this feature. For WordPress sites, you can use the W3 Total Cache plugin to improve your site’s performance.
Using plugins
Plugins can make your website faster by improving the way it handles requests. They can reduce page load time by removing unnecessary characters and reducing the number of requests. There are many options available to improve page speed and many are free. Here are a few plugins that are great for improving website speed.
W3 Total Cache: This plugin can improve your website’s speed by up to ten times. It also improves your server response time and makes it easier to manage more traffic. It is free and can be found on the official WordPress Plugin repository. W3 Total Cache combines minification of CSS and JavaScript with cacheing to reduce page size. It also offers security mechanisms and performance data.
Smush: This plugin is a free WordPress plugin that optimizes images. It enables lazy loading for images and reduces their file size without sacrificing image quality. It can also optimize bulk images by removing unused metadata. Smush also provides a bulk smush option that allows you to compress up to 50 images at once. In addition, it can identify large images and optimize them as they load on the page.
