Introduction
A high-performing website requires a high loading speed. Page speed significantly affects your conversion rate since visitors will be happy if your web page loads faster. You may be wondering whether a few milliseconds can affect your website. The answer is yes. The longer your website takes to load, the more likely you are to lose your audience. Just as SEO in Adelaide will increase the amount traffic you get to your website. In this article, we will discuss every site load time and why it matters.
What is Site Load Time?
Site load time is the time your website or web page takes to load and fully appear on the screen. The load time refers to how fast all content, including text, images, and videos, loads. The speed can depend on page type, file sizes, plugins, and the website server. Load speed is essential for both desktop and mobile websites. Page speed has been a ranking factor for many years, and Google recently rolled out mobile-first indexing. As such, focusing on your website’s mobile loading speed is essential.
What is the Ideal Site Load Time?
Google Research in 2018 stated that the average mobile web page takes 15.3 seconds to load. The extended time is due to mobile sites having too many page elements. However, 0-4 seconds is the ideal site load time since the first five seconds of page load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. The highest conversion rate occurs on websites that load between 0 and 2 seconds. Each additional second of load time leads to an average 4.4% reduction in the conversion rate.
Why is Site Load Time Crucial for SEO?
Your site load time impacts the user experience, and you will sacrifice conversion and revenue for every second of frustration. Page speed is also a primary ranking factor for search engines. Google and other search engines strive to provide an excellent user experience. As such, your page load speed can affect your ranking on the SERPs.
How to Optimise Your Website for Better Page Speed
Now that you know the importance of site load speed, it is time to learn how to optimise your website to meet the recommended page speed. Here are the best and most tried page speed optimisation tips.
1. Audit your page speed
Begin by auditing your site speed on your desktop and mobile websites. This will give you a benchmark to use when optimising your website for page speed. You can use Google PageSpeed Insight to see how your website performs on desktop and mobile devices. Google provides a speed score between 0 and 100 for every web page. The higher the score, the better. The best thing about Google PageSpeed is that it provides quick ways to decrease your load time on desktop and mobile. The report will also tell you the number of seconds you could gain by making the changes.
2. Optimise your images
Images are the biggest contributors to low page speeds since they account for about 75% of your page’s weight. The best thing is to compress your images to reduce file sizes. You can use compression tools like Compressor.io, Kraken, and Jpegmini.com to compress your images. Also, ensure your image dimensions are never greater than the container size when uploading them to your website. For instance, don’t upload an image 800 pixels wide if the container has a maximum width of 400 pixels.
3. Trim down custom fonts
Custom fonts add personality to your website and help you stand out. Unfortunately, custom fonts add weight to your web pages, slowing down your website’s performance. Additionally, users must install custom fonts on their operating system for your website to appear correctly.
4. Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files
Minifying is the process of removing unnecessary data without affecting how browsers produce your content. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are essential since they determine your website’s appearance. However, they add your site’s requests every time a user visits. Minifying these files helps reduce the number of requests, allowing you to shave valuable time off your site’s page load speed. Please engage your developer to help you minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
5. Invest in a CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a geographically distributed group of servers providing fast Internet content delivery. For instance, a visitor in Adelaide may deal with slower load times because your server is across the world. A CDN will make this faster by copying and storing your site elements in strategic locations worldwide. The CDN caches the site’s contents and redirects the user’s request from the initial site’s server to their closest CDN.
Conclusion
Please don’t ignore your site load time since it is a primary ranking factor for Google and other search engines. A website that loads fast also provides an excellent user experience, which means increased engagement and conversion rates.
