A great looking and reliable website is a crucial component in your company’s overall success. Most modern consumers will research a business extensively online before using them. This is why you need to make sure your website stays in good shape. One of the biggest problems you will have with your domain is slow page load speeds.

Allowing this problem to persist will lead to lots of sales leads being lost. Nearly 90 percent of online shoppers polled in a recent survey say they regularly leave websites that fail to load fast enough. Modern consumers demand fast and efficient websites. This is why fixing page load issues in a hurry is so important when trying to grow your customer base. Consider these tips when trying to improve website load times.

Work on Minimizing Time to First Byte

The term time to first byte (TTFB) refers to the amount of time it takes your website to start loading content. The longer a web browser has to wait to get the first byte of data from your website’s server, the slower it will inevitably load. According to Google, your TTFB time should be around 200 milliseconds or less.

If your website is having trouble with fast TTFB times, then you need to focus on optimizing your server. When a user tries to access your website, three basic steps take place as the first byte of data is presented. These three steps are:

  • The DNS lookup
  • Server Processing
  • Server response

If your website server is extremely slow or inundated with requests, it will cause problems in relation to how quickly the first byte of data is transmitted. Instead of dealing with slow onsite servers, you need to think about investing in VPS hosting. With VPS hosting, you can make your website faster and far more reliable. Be sure to check out the Accuweb Hosting VPS solution when trying to speed up your website.

Reducing HTTP Requests

Did you realize 80 percent of your page’s load time is spent downloading things like images, scripts and stylesheets. Each time a user logs onto your website, an HTTP request is sent out for each of these elements. This means the ore on-page components your website has, the longer it will take for these HTTP requests to process. If you want to find out how many HTTP requests your website currently uses, then using the Developer Tools in Google Chrome or any other web browser is a good idea.

Once you know how many HTTP requests your website is using, you can figure out how to reduce this number. In most cases, reducing the number of HTTP requests can help you speed up your website significantly. If you are unsure about how to perform this task, then you need to think about working with an experienced developer.

Perform a Compression Audit

Most newcomers to the world of websites fail to realize just how important file sizes are. If all of the files on your website are exceptionally large, they will affect website load speeds. This is why you need to think about performing a compression audit on your website. Most of the images and content on a website create bulky files that are over 100KB in size. Leaving these files at this size will only lead to problems in the future.

This is why putting in time to compress these files is a good idea. Luckily, there are a number of tools specially designed to make file compression easier and faster. If you are using a WordPress website, then a plugin like WP Smush can help you shrink the size of your files. With a bit of research, you should have no problem finding the technology you need to perform this important task. Performing a compression audit once every few months will allow you to avoid file size-related load issues altogether.

A Fast Website Can Lead to Higher Conversion Rates

Instead of looking at a website as something you can set and forget, you need to work on keeping this tool functional. With some hard work and the help of knowledgeable professionals, keeping your website fast and reliable will be a breeze.