Introduction
Website performance refers to the speed in which web pages are downloaded and displayed on the user's web browser. Website performance optimization is the technique of methodically improving the performance of your website to meet your business objectives. Website optimization can be used to make your website more effective at meeting the goals which may include to get more leads, sales, or lessen customer service calls.
Testing Your Website Speed
Before optimizing your website performance, you need to test your website’s speed. There are various websites offering online tools to test your website speed. You can use one of the following third party URLs to test your website speed.
https://gtmetrix.com
https://www.pingdom.com
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
After knowing your website’s speed by using the above-mentioned tools, it is now time to use some effective techniques to optimize the performance of your website. Muvi recommends the following procedure to optimize your website’s performance.
- Optimize Your Images
Remember that, larger the image, longer is the loading time. This is because, your browser needs to pull more data if the image size is large. Hence, choosing the right size is the key to optimize the loading speed of your website. Finally, ensure to directly resize the images instead of using the HTML scaling. Setting height =”150” width =”300” doesn’t work fine as you are still making the larger image file to be downloaded in full. You can also use below mentioned third party image compression tools to compress your images.
- Use More Text Than Images
Try to make a balance of sound design with great performance. Compared to images, text renders much faster. Also, using text is more effective for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Make sure to use text for headers instead of images.
- Minify Javascript & CSS
It doesn't need to be there, if it's not absolutely required. Remove unused code, whitespace, and reduce duplicate entries. You can also use some online tools.
As it reduces the amount of code that has to be requested from the server, this speeds up your load times.
- HTML Optimization
Do not copy or paste from other applications, for example, word processors. These applications can bring over many intricate HTML that will delay load times on your webpage. Also, instead of nested structures, use simple structures in your HTML. Always, stick to standards-compliant, as browsers will be able to parse your webpage more efficiently. Lastly, remember that, whitespace add to the overall size (in bytes) of your page even though it is good for readability for users.
- Serve Scaled Images
Do not depend on CSS to size your images down. Instead of that, always upload your images at scale. For instance, perhaps the image you upload has a 300px width, but the column it was placed in is only 200px wide. This results in your image being scaled down to 200px due to CSS so that it matches the column size. It is always better to upload images at scale and upload multiple resolutions of your images and serve the right resolution for the right device.
6. Upload Small Size Videos for Homepage Banner
Just like images, videos should be optimized for the web. While uploading videos for homepage banner (Maximum size limit is 50 MB), try to upload a smaller size or compressed video. We recommend to upload .mp4 format videos. If it is possible, try to remove the audio from the video. There are several software tools available by using which you can remove the audio from the video and also you can compress the video. Small and compreesd videos help the website loading faster.
7. Test Your Website Speed After Customization
After customizing your website, you need to check its speed by using the above mentioned procedure. This will help you find out the elements which are responsible for slowing down your website. After identifying the issues, you can resolve them by using any of the methods we have mentioned in this help article.
8. Limit the Number of Content in the Featured Section
Adding more content in the featured section of your homepage may afftect your page loading speed. So, when adding content to the featured section of your homepage, tyr to limit it to only 10-15 content. It will help your website loading faster.