So why is page speed important these days?

Google has indicated that page speed is one of the signals they use to rank pages. In addition, a slow page speed means the page takes longer to load and possibly higher bounce rates as people do not want to wait for the page to load.

According to Kissmetrics, 47% of consumers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less and 40% of people will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. If your website is too slow, you are losing your audience and your business.

What are the ways to improve page speed?

Here are 3 simple ways to get started.

1. Compress images

If you are using a WordPress site, you can install this plugin called WP Smush Image. In the case of non-Wordpress sites, you can look for free online tools such as Optimizilla or TinyPNG.

You can find more tools at https://enviragallery.com/9-best-free-image-optimization-tools-for-image-compression/

2. Minify HTML

You can also  minify your HTML, CSS and JavaScripts to remove code comments, formatting and unused code.

Eg. Tools include https://github.com/cferdinandi/gmt-html-minify, https://cssminifier.com/, https://www.minifier.org/

3. Browser caching

When a visitor goes to your website, the elements of the pages (HTML, CSS, Javascript, images) are downloaded. If your visitors can save and reuse the files in your website, it will reduce the load time significantly.

For WordPress sites, you can use a plugin like W3 Total Cache to enable caching. For non-Wordpress site, you might need to edit the HTTP headers on your site, through the .htaccess file. If you are not familiar with this, we will suggest getting professional help for it. You can set different storage (expiry) for different type of files. Do take note not to set the parameters for too long because it might mean that the visitor is not getting the latest version of your website.

There are many resources at https://gtmetrix.com/resources.html that can help you improve on your Page speed. Do check them out.