Moving onto server optimizations first on the list is GZIP Compression. In this post about deferring load times, written by Patrick Sexton, he goes over more thoroughly the step-by-step process of where to begin with deferring JavaScript.
This will give a snappy response of visuals for the user, which at the very least, makes the site feel faster, even if it doesn’t always load faster. Deferring the JavaScript basically waits for your website to load, then loads all the external JS. Second, you can defer loading the JavaScript. First, you can put the external scripts at the bottom of the page. There are two common solutions to this problem.
So for those times where you’re just seeing a blank white screen, or a partially loaded website, you can thank JavaScript for taking its sweet time to load. JavaScript is often the culprit for having your site visually take a while to appear. Using a tool such as Codekit makes doing all of this very simple, but if you don’t have Codekit, here is a list of tools you can use to easily merge and minify your CSS and JS. I will talk about this in more detail later on in this post. One, it decreases the file size that users need to download, and two, it reduces the number of http requests needed. Minifying and merging your CSS and JavaScript serves two major purposes when optimizing your site. Even though you can scale large images with CSS, it’s something you don’t want to do, as users will still have to load the large image, as shown in the screenshot of what not to do. In addition to compressing the image, you also want to make sure it’s properly scaled for where it’s going.
MINIFY CSS WITH CODEKIT DOWNLOAD
For quickly compressing PNGs, I like to use TinyPng, which makes it simple with drag and drop ability, allowing you to quickly drop your image image into the app, and having the app do the dirty work for you, spitting out a compressed image for you to then download and work with.
MINIFY CSS WITH CODEKIT SOFTWARE
Some compiler applications can do it directly for you like CodeKit if you’re a Mac user, or more notable software like Photoshop. There are many tools you can use to compress images, but depending on the format, you can select what works best for you. In addition to slowing the load time, you’re eating up your mobile users data by having them download large images. When users have to download large uncompressed images, all of that plays a role in increased load times. Compress Images Image Compression ToolĬompressing images is one of the biggest areas that is often overlooked and more often than not, this is the largest culprit for slow load times. Here’s a list of optimization tips you can do to help improve your grade, and get your site to an optimized state.
Once you have a report, you now have a place to start. I typically start off by running a report on the site using a few different tools, such as Web Page Test, Google’s PageSpeed Insights, or GTmetrix. First thing is to get a benchmark for yourself. Now, regardless of whether you’re a global giant like Amazon, or a small local business, speeding up your website is going to help improve your bottom line.Īs an advocate for website performance, approaching the idea of optimizing a website can sometimes be a daunting task, but remember, website optimization is about the journey, not the destination, so break it up in to manageable pieces. In a recent report by Amazon, every 100ms in latency cost them 1% in sales. In an industry where fractions of seconds really are the benchmark, it’s so important to have an optimized site. Why a Fast Website is Important to Your BusinessĪ slow website can be the result of a number of things, but most importantly, a slow website means your users are waiting for multiple seconds, seconds that may seem like hours, all because your site’s performance is not at the level it should be.