Page load speed is the single most important aspect of a website.
This may sound a bit dramatic, but it’s true.
It’s all good and well having a beautiful website, but if its overall performance causes a negative experience, you may very well be compromising your brand and business.
The modern day consumer is an impatient and fickle one, and keeping them waiting isn’t a good idea. With the recommended total page load time averaging roughly three seconds, there’s very little room for error.
There are a number of ways which one can increase their website’s performance. The following blog post offers a few tactics that you can employ.
If you’re not fond of reading, watch Episode 15 of Divi Chat instead, where, a group of expert Divi web developers discuss various tactics that they’ve employed to boost the performance of both their own and their client’s websites.
How to Test the Speed of Your Website
There are a number of online tools that will help you test the speed of your website, often from different locations around the world.
Some of these tools assess site speed by a grade. This isn’t always the best measure, so rather use these tools as a guide and don’t be too strict about the grading.
How To Increase the Speed of Your WordPress Website
The following blog post is broken down into three sections, and it explains how you can improve your website’s site speed and performance before you build, while you’re building the website and after it’s gone live.
Even if your web project is not in a specific stage, read through each point and see what applies.
Plan: Designing for Speed Before Your Build
While it may not alway be possible, if you are in the position of starting from scratch, we’d recommend considering the following:
1. Plan Your Website
Websites come in many different shapes and sizes, and while there may be trends or patterns that can apply to each, no two websites are the same.
A one-page website will look and perform very differently to a portfolio showcase website with lots of imagery. Similarly, a membership site will perform differently to an e-store.
If you can plan and map out your site’s functionality – and possibly forecast how the business owner may choose to grow his or her website over a period of time – you’ll be able to build the website with a solid game plan in mind.
Site speed can be remedied post-launch with a number of plugins or third party services, but somewhat predicting where a site will lead in the future will allow you to give your client a heads up on what they may incur cost-wise, as well as the sort of work that you’d be billing them for, should these bridges need to be crossed.