Reduce Page Size and Increase Load Speed

Why does page size and load speed matter?

Every webpage on the internet has a file size. This size is determined by several factors such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, fonts, and assets like images and videos. If a webpage’s size is really large, it will take longer for it to load. A page’s load time is how long it takes to fully load everything on the webpage.

A page’s size and load speed is very important. The faster a page’s load speed, the better. The longer a visitor has to wait to see a page, the more likely they will leave the website completely, leading to higher bounce rates. Ideally, a website should finish loading in two seconds or less. Any longer and the chances of the visitor leaving increases to 32 percent. If your website’s load time is too long, you should consider how to reduce the page size, to speed it up.

What causes slow load times?

There are plenty of things that can cause a page to load slowly. Some of the main culprits include:

• JavaScript and jQuery plugins
• Large, high-quality images
• Too many HTTP requests
• The number of redirects being used
• Unoptimized or messy code

How can you check a page’s load speed?

Want to check on your own website’s load speed? Here are few resources:

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Pingdom Website Speed Test
• WebpageTest
• GTmetrix

What can you do to speed things up?

Now that you know what goes into a webpage’s size and load time, here are some quick and easy solutions to optimize and speed up your page.

• Load JavaScript files asynchronously: Setting up your scripts so that they load asynchronously will allow the user’s browser to load them at the same time instead of waiting for each one to finish loading.
• Optimize your images: Reduce the size of any unnecessarily large images. If the image is only 600 pixels wide on the page, it doesn’t need to be uploaded with a 2,000 pixel width. Along with this, it’s also a good idea to compress images before uploading. There are a bunch of online tools available, but my favorite is TinyPNG.
• Reduce the number of HTTP requests: Combine CSS and JavaScript files into one file each. This way, there will be fewer HTTP requests needed when loading a page.
• Clean up your code: Remove unnecessary spaces and comments. Audit your code for anything that’s no longer being used, including plugins and fonts. Once your code is all cleaned up, minify it!
• Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN is a network of servers around the world that help to speed up a webpage’s load time by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user.

These days, it’s expected that web pages load quickly. Slow sites not only lead to poor user experience, but they also hurt your page’s search ranking. Understanding and identifying some of the causes of your website’s slow load time is just the first step. Hopefully these tips and tricks will show you how to reduce your page size and help improve your load speed!

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