In the new technological era, mobile phones and computers are getting newer and faster. Many of us now want websites to be instant, and if they aren’t, we would consider the page to be a non-user friendly page and many would exist that particular site. Research shows that 54% of users will bounce off a website if that page takes longer than 3 seconds to load due to a slower page load time. With many websites aiming for their load time to be less than 200 milliseconds. Whatever you base your progress on, having a slow site speed will make it more difficult for you to achieve. Therefore, the faster the webpage load, the better the progress of the company. Luckily there are some useful hints and tips to help you reduce the time it takes for web pages to load. So we have created a small checklist to help your website run as fast as possible.   

#1 Minimise your HTTP requests Adding too many components to your site may make your site look good, however if everyone has bounced off before they can see it, there is no point. That’s because the more components you add to each page, for example, images, stylesheets, scripts and flash, the more HTTP requests are made, the slower the load time of the website will be. In order to cut this down, make your site more streamline by cutting out amount of elements on the page. Another tip to reduce the HTTP requests is whenever you add an image to the site, use CSS to do so, this will reduce the time speed.   

#2 Compress sites If you have a large page, with high-quality images and content, these are often more than 100kb. These are too big and therefore will create a slower page load. Hence, the best way to solve this issue is to compress the page, which is a process of zipping them.   

#3 Optimise images If an image takes too long to load, it’s probably due to the size of the image. You can always resize this image, allowing the load page time to be reduced. However, you still want the user experience to be optimised, therefore you will need to find the right balance of resizing the image and for the image still to be a good enough quality. Also when uploading images, it is best to upload them as a JPEG file, this is the best option as it is the quickest download speed. Whereas PNG and GIFS will create a slower page load time. We would recommend for you not to use BMPs or TIFFs as these are not as compatible with quick browser speed.   

If you would like help on website development, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us, we are happy to help. Call us on 0191 276 7551 or email us at tickleus@wrigglemarketing.co.uk.