Think about when you visit a website. If the site takes a long time to load or has issues with performance, will you continue to visit the site? The answer is a very loud, No. Your customers feel the same way about your site. Website performance is the key to keeping customers happy and coming back for more, so when investing in domain and web hosting services, do not neglect the need to ensure your website is fully optimized for ideal performance. Here are six tips on improving website performance optimization.
1. Use CDN
A Content Delivery Network or CDN refers to servers set across various geographical locations. The farther away a visitor is from the server, the slower the loading speed will be. However, CDNs can share the load and improve website performance by sending the request to the nearest server in the network to load the website correctly. Your business website will thrive with the use of a Content Delivery Network.
2. Ensure You Are Using the Best WordPress Hosting Site
First of all, you need to take your site to the fastest shared hosting WordPress service company available. This will allow your site to improve performance from the server-side. Merely going with the lowest-priced web hosting service may not be the best option for your business. The key is to determine the correct type of hosting service for your needs, not based on price but on what is offered.
There are three different types of hosting, shared hosting, virtual private hosting or VPS, and a dedicated server. Each one has its own set of benefits. Shared WordPress hosting is among the most common, and it can be great for most businesses. Still, if you need increased performance due to an abundance of customers, you might want to invest in VPS or a dedicated server for the best hosting services in USA and Canada.
3. Optimize Website and Image Size
One of the ways you, as a business owner, can help speed up website performance for your customers is to cut down on the overall size of your site and reduce image size. Compressing images with tools like Kraken, Image Optim, and JPEGmini can help reduce the size of images without affecting their overall visual quality. This also helps them display correctly on a variety of screen sizes. Additionally, take out unnecessary aspects of your website. Reducing what is required to load for each visitor will vastly improve load time.
4. Take Plugins into Consideration
Some business owners may attempt to make their website the best by utilizing every plugin available. However, what ends up happening is a vast vacuum within the website's performance. The more plugins that appear on your site, the longer it will take to load, so only download and use the ones you truly need. The others should be eradicated and discarded from your website. Also, update plugins regularly to improve security features for the site.
5. CSS and JavaScript Files Should Be Minimized
HTTP requests are generated from CSS and JavaScript files within your website. These are used for various parts of the website and require access qualifications. This can be great for security purposes on your site but not so good for overall performance. It is OK to have these files available on your site but minimize how many. Grouping them into one or just a few files will help improve overall performance optimization on the site.
6. Look at Your Fonts
Like images, fonts carry a lot of weight on your website. Where various fonts can look amazing, and their use can improve the visual appearance of your site, web fonts can add yet another HTTP request to contend with, so it is best only to use standard fonts for the most part. You will also want to limit the number of variable fonts and streamline the site's look. Stick to a few modern fonts rather than getting crazy with everything.
Your website performance is critical in ensuring customers are happy. A website that takes too long to load will not be visited often. Take the time to examine your website and account for these six tips. You can further improve the performance of your website with the help of your WordPress hosting site, so ensure you find and use the best one available. These tips will improve the performance of your website and help it look less cluttered to your customers.