Quick summary
Website speed matters for user experience and SEO. You can make quick improvements by optimising images (keep them small), removing slideshows, videos, and social media feeds, and cleaning up unused themes and plugins in WordPress. Keep everything updated, tidy your database, and use caching, lazy loading, and a CDN where possible. More advanced wins include updating your PHP version and hosting your site close to your customers. Even small fixes can make a noticeable difference to load times.
Your website speed is super important because it improves user experience and can improve your search engine rankings!
Why is website speed important?
Check out this diagram to see how it all hangs together.
Where can I check my website speed?
Here are a few links where you can check it:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: This tool analyses the content of your web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. It also provides separate scores for mobile and desktop versions. Your mobile score should be above 50, and your desktop version should be above 90!
- GTmetrix provides insights into how well your site loads and offers actionable recommendations on how to optimise it.
- Pingdom Website Speed Test: Pingdom offers a range of tests including speed testing, analysing load time, and identifying bottlenecks. When using Pingdom, make sure you use a server that’s closest to the location of where your website is hosted.
- WebPageTest: This tool allows you to test your website speed from different locations around the world, using real browsers at real consumer connection speeds.
Here are 15 things you can do today to speed up your website
- Make sure the very first (header) image that loads on a page is smaller than 250 KB (yes even the huge image you may display at the top).
- Remove any slideshow or video from the website header. Slideshows are bad anyway (click here to read about the 7 reasons why you shouldn’t have a slideshow on your website). Display videos further down on the page.
- Make sure your logo has a very small file size (smaller than 50KB!).
- Remove any Social Media feeds from your website.
- They slow down your site.
- It’s also not professional (not anymore!).
- Ensure any photo on your website is smaller than 250 KB (click her to learn everything there is to know about photos on your website).
- WordPress: Remove ALL themes are that not in use. Only have your active theme installed.
- WordPress: Remove ALL plugins that are not in use.
- WordPress: Do a plugin audit and see if you use all active plugins. If some are not in use, deactivate and remove them.
- WordPress: Always keep your plugins updated.
- WordPress: Tidy up your database. Remove spam comments or old revisions to make it more efficient.
A bit more techie, but still easy to do:
- Make sure you’re on the latest standard PHP version (click this link to see the most current PHP version – this opens a Google search).
- How to find out which PHP version I am on? You can either check your hosting package under PHP settings or PHP Version and change it there directly. Take a note of the version you currently use in case you need to change it back. If you cannot amend it there, ask your web hosting company first.
- Important: If you change your PHP version, depending on your website setup, your website might no longer be displayed. Don’t panic. You can always change it back to the previous version!
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network). This is usually provided by your hosting company. Check if it’s activated. If not find how how to activate it. Some hosting companies charge more for this, but it’s worth it!
- Minify CSS, Javascript and HTML: In WordPress, you can use the WordPress Caching Plugins. If you have a sophisticated hosting package, it may include Optimisation options. Check your hosting package first. Only ever activate ONE option at a time, then check if your website is still OK. Do a speed test after you’ve activated an option.
- Implement Lazy Loading: See point 11. The WP Rocket plugin does this. Alternatively, your web hosting might have an option to activate this.
- Enable caching: Your web hosting company should be able to activate this for you.
More time-consuming thing to do to speed up your website:
- Where are your customers?
- Where is your website hosted?
This is actually an important consideration. If the majority of your customers are in the UK, for example, you should also host your website in the UK.
You can use this website to find out where your website server is located.
If your customers are in the UK and your website is hosted in the US, it might load slower. Big hosting companies offer a choice of server location these days.
How can I speed up my Squarespace, Wix or Shopify website?
For these platforms, you’re essentially buying into their hosting platform.
Here are a few articles I found:
