In today’s digital space, everything is provided at a fast pace and that should be no different for your website. Research provided from Google found that 53% of all mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds.
There are lots of tools out there where you can run a speed test of your site and help identify key issues with your website. Some that I personally use for my projects are https://gtmetrix.com/ , https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and https://tools.pingdom.com/
While many recommendations from these tests require server or web code knowledge to implement, there are some that are important as a web user to consider when updating your site.
Reduce image file sizes
When uploading any new image to your site, the file size can play a major role in your site speed. The larger the file size the longer it will take for the browser to display the image resulting in longer page load times.
Some ways to reduce a image size is by resizing or cropping the image using a photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, MS Paint, and many more). We recommend for full screen images to be no more than 1920 pixels wide and for medium size images, 720 pixels wide.
Another way to reduce a image file size is by Lossless Compression. This compression method reduces the amount of data required for a image up until the point where the image quality isn’t changed, thus reducing the file size. Some ways to do Lossless Compressing is through certain photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, ext) or using online tools such as https://tinyjpg.com/. If you have a WordPress site, there a some plugins which can do this process for you, such as, EWWW Image Optimizer or WP Smush It or reSmush.it.
Use external hosting platforms for videos
Videos are large file size which can be a heavy burden on your site to host. From taking up valuable file space or server bandwidth, placing a video directly on your site will increase page load speed dramatically.
The solution is to host your video on a third-party service like YouTube, or Vimeo and then embed the video onto your page. This allows the third-party servers to take on the video load rather than your website hosting.
Reduce the number of WordPress plugins
For WordPress users, plugins are a great way to add additional functionality to your site. With thousands of plugins available it has never been easier to find and install a new plugin. But one of the biggest draw backs from adding too many different plugins is negative impact on your site’s speed. Each plugin will require its own resources to run and can easily overload your site.
By deactivating and deleting unnecessary plugins you can free up these resources and make maintaining your WordPress site easier in the long run.
