Website speed and performance optimization

Recent Case Studies on Site Speed Performance

There are third party site speed case studies available to back these findings from Doubleclick up:

1. Ancestory.com recorded a 7% positive rise in conversions after improving the render time of web pages by 68%, reducing page bloat by 46% and reducing load time by 64%.
2. A presentation by AliExpress claimed they reduced load time for their pages by 36% and recorded a 10.5% increase in orders and a 27% increase in conversion rates for new customers.
3. Artificial latency added to the Telegraph resulted in page views dropping by 11% for a 4s delay and 44% for a 20s delay.
4. The Trainline reduced latency by 0.3s across their funnel and revenue increased by an extra £8 million a year.
5. Instagram increased impressions and user profile scroll interactions by simply speeding up their site.

and very interestingly:

‘For every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed, Mobify’s customer base saw a 1.11% lift in session based conversion, amounting to an average annual revenue increase of $376,789. Similarly, for every 100ms decrease in checkout page load speed, Mobify’s customers saw a 1.55% lift* in session based conversion, amounting to an average annual revenue increase of $526,147′  (from wpostats)

How we do it :

1. Enable compression

Use Gzip, a software application for file compression, to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes.

Do not use gzip on image files. Instead, compress these in a program like Photoshop where you can retain control over the quality of the image. See “Optimize images” below.

2. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

By optimizing your code (including removing spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters), you can dramatically increase your page speed. Also remove code comments, formatting, and unused code. Google recommends using YUI Compressor for both CSS and JavaScript.

3. Reduce redirects

Each time a page redirects to another page, your visitor faces additional time waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. For example, if your mobile redirect pattern looks like this: “example.com -> www.example.com -> m.example.com -> m.example.com/home,” each of those two additional redirects makes your page load slower.

4. Leverage browser caching

Browsers cache a lot of information (stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and more) so that when a visitor comes back to your site, the browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page. Use a tool like YSlow to see if you already have an expiration date set for your cache. Then set your “expires” header for how long you want that information to be cached. In many cases, unless your site design changes frequently, a year is a reasonable time period. Google has more information about leveraging caching here.

5. Improve server response time

Your server response time is affected by the amount of traffic you receive, the resources each page uses, the software your server uses, and the hosting solution you use. To improve your server response time, look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them. The optimal server response time is under 200ms. Learn more about optimizing your time to first byte.

6. Use a content distribution network

Content distribution networks (CDNs), also called content delivery networks, are networks of servers that are used to distribute the load of delivering content. Essentially, copies of your site are stored at multiple, geographically diverse data centers so that users have faster and more reliable access to your site.

7. Optimize images

Be sure that your images are no larger than they need to be, that they are in the right file format (PNGs are generally better for graphics with fewer than 16 colors while JPEGs are generally better for photographs) and that they are compressed for the web.

Use CSS sprites to create a template for images that you use frequently on your site like buttons and icons. CSS sprites combine your images into one large image that loads all at once (which means fewer HTTP requests) and then display only the sections that you want to show. This means that you are saving load time by not making users wait for multiple images to load.

… and more important : deep manual analysis and refactoring

The thing is – for fully optimized website and maximum performances your website requires professional attention, and beside plugin mechanisms, deep manual analysis and manual works on it ! Check our website maintenance services too.

TheLeadwebtech can help you with website speed optimization and increase your digital success!