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Website Speed Optimization Services
You may have an eye-pleasing website, but if it takes too long for the average browser to load it, you’ll have plenty of frustrated users who’ll be fleeing your domain. This is especially true in an era when mobile browsing is king. If less powerful devices running on wireless internet can’t load your content fast enough, they’ll be looking for other websites who can serve them faster.
SearchWorks offers website speed optimization services to help you minimize webpage load times. Our highly experienced team of web developers and designers know just what it takes to clean your website’s code, streamline content delivery schemes and make your multimedia assets lean without compromising the look and feel you want for your pages.
What is Site Speed?
Site speed is the measure of the rate at which a website’s pages load fully on browsers. The shorter the load times, the faster a website’s speed is. In general, more complex designs with heavier image assets take longer to load. Conversely, simpler designs with less elaborate visual elements take less time to load.
In the past, webmasters did not pay much attention to site speed and its impact so long as the pages eventually load. These days, as webmasters gain more access to web analytics and see the negative impact of slow-loading pages on business, greater efforts are exerted to improve this facet of web design.
Site speed optimization became an even more mainstream practice when Google announced that page lad times were being factored into the rankings in its search results. As one might imagine, webmasters operating in competitive niches immediately took site speed a lot more seriously to gain an edge over their peers in the name of precious Google traffic.
Factors That Affect Site Speed
There are several factors that can affect a website’s overall speed. The good news is that all of them are within your control and can therefore be improved. When we’re approached for site speed optimization services, the SearchWorks web development and design team looks at the following areas first:
- Cleanliness of Code. When a webpage has blocks of code that are either unnecessary or are only serving minor functions, that code is often referred to as “dirty.” More often than not, this code can be replaced with more efficiently-written programming or altogether removed. This means that browsers will have less code to read and render, allowing them to load the webpage in a shorter amount of time.
- Quality of Hosting. Not all hosting service providers are built equal. Some are better at delivering stability, security and faster data transmission than others. When you’re choosing a hosting service provider, make it a point to read reviews, message boards and to seek your developer’s advice.
- Usage of Widgets and Plugins. Widgets and plugins are extensions that add functionality to websites that save you the trouble of having to code them yourself. While this is generally a good thing, you have to be aware that each plugin and widget adds more code to your webpage, which also means a greater payload that your servers will need to transfer to users’ browsers. Make sure to only use extensions that are absolutely necessary and avoid poorly coded ones that will bloat up your pages.
- Image File Sizes. Images are usually the heaviest assets found on webpages. To minimize the weight they add to your site, make it a point to use light file formats such as JPEG, WNG or WebP. Making sure that you only upload the necessary image sizes also helps.
- Excessive Redirection. Redirects are a necessary function that a website executes whenever a webpage is deleted and replaced with another one that resides in a different file path. In small numbers, redirects don’t inflict much of a burden on your website’s servers. However, thousands r tens f thousands of them can start eating up CPU and memory resources, cannibalizing bandwidth that’s supposed to go to normal browsing activities. Ultimately, this can bring your website’s response times down, dragging overall speed with it.
- Excessive CSS and JavaScript Usage. Not all code can be read with the same speed and efficiency by browsers and search engine bots. Efficiently-written HTML5 may be a snap to read, but CSS and JavaScript are a who different matter. Far too often, these elements can bog down load times especially when they’re used without moderation. Our web developers and designers have the expertise to apply techniques that allow you to keep your JS and CSS functions with minimal negative impact on your load times.
There are several other areas that might contribute to a website’s slow load times but these are the most common and most impactful.
The Site Speed Optimization Process
When we handle website speed optimization projects, our clients can expect this simple process:
- Technical Assessment. We will evaluate your site’s loading speed using a battery of tests including automated ones such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Speed test, and Google Search Console.
- Design Deliberation. We’ll identify the elements that are causing the slowdown in your website and present you with options on how they can be addressed. For the most part, we try not to alter the functionality, look and feel of the website. However, if it can’t be avoided, we’ll consult you first.
- Redesign and Redevelopment. After agreeing with the client on the recommendations that can be implemented, we’ll proceed to production immediately. This is the part where changes to your website’s settings, code and design might take place.
- Deployment. Once the recommendations have all been implemented, we’ll show you the website and how it performs in a staging environment. Once the client is satisfied, we can move the website to a live environment for full deployment.
- Monitoring and Revisions. After deployment, we’ll allot two weeks of random checks and tests to make sure the website performs up to par in the real world. Once more, we’ll be using the standard testing tools to gauge the website’s performance.
If you feel that your website is in need of some speeding up, contact SearchWorks today for a free consultation session and quote!
