Have you ever clicked on a website where you had to wait a long time to see the landing page, which made you give up? Your website visitors may also face the same situation if it loads slowly too. A slower website is the main reason that decreases organic traffic, damages your search rankings, and even reduces your sales.
But the good thing is that it is a flexible issue, and you can solve it by using the right tools and smart techniques. That is why in this blog, we have talked about such tools and tips that will give you a clear picture of your website’s speed and also help in making your website fast.
So, whether you are running a marketing agency, an online store, or owning a personal blog website, this guide will surely help you to stay fast and relevant.
Best Tools to Check Your Website Speed
Let’s look at some of the best website speed test tools online that help you gain insight into loading times and also give recommendations for site improvement.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is one of the most trusted Google tools one can use for checking website load time. This tool can analyze a website’s functionality on desktop as well as mobile devices and provide a detailed report. It measures different aspects such as load time, responsiveness, visual stability, time to first byte (TTFB), etc. Based on the diagnosis, it also gives actionable recommendations on how you can improve your overall SEO performance.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix provides a detailed site performance using Google Lighthouse and key Web Vitals to show how well your site is running. It gives a GTmetrix grade after the assessment, which reflects overall page performance including page loading speed. Auditing your website on this tool will offer you detailed information about the top site issues. You can use this data to spot improvement areas for optimization and then set priorities accordingly.
Pingdom
It is a user-friendly measurement tool that investigates your website speed in any global location. It provides the performance grade by testing your website’s URL and gives an overview of how fast your site loads and recommendations to improve load times. Here you can also see the number of requests your website forwards to load its content. Pingdom tool will help in understanding the performance bottlenecks, making it easier to pinpoint the probable reasons for the slowing down of a website’s load time.
WebPageTest
This web performance testing tool is equipped with advanced options that let you configure the test according to your requirements. It gives a detailed report that shows waterfall charts, load time breakdowns, and particular insights on server response times. If you want thorough insight into how your site performs under different conditions then this is the perfect tool for deeper analysis.
Actionable Tips to Improve Website Speed
Once after using the above tools and finding the areas that need improvement, the time has come to implement some changes. Here are some miraculous hints that will help you speed up your site:
Optimize Images
Large-size images can considerably have a negative impact on the loading of your webpage. So, optimizing the images becomes important. With online tools like TinyPng, ImageOptim, and Adobe Express, reducing image sizes is very simple. For higher image quality, modern image formats like WebP and AVIF are also being used.
Minimize HTTP Requests
The elements of a page such as images, scripts, stylesheets, etc.-each generate an HTTP request. The greater the amount of requests a page sends, the longer it will take to load. You can reduce these requests by joining the CSS and JavaScript files together and may also use CSS sprites to unite several images into a single file.
Enable Browser Caching
Browser caching gives allowance to save some of your website’s elements, like images and stylesheets, in the visitor’s browser. So that browsers do not have to load the same elements again when users visit any of your website’s pages. It helps in increasing the loading speed of your site. You can add a few codes to the .htaccess file for browser caching, or you can also use plugins instead.
Use a Reputed CDN (Content Delivery Network)
The content delivery network stores your website’s content in servers that lie in many geographical locations. So users can access your site from the nearest server with good speed. But consider distributing your website content with reputable CDN tools such as Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, or KeyCDN. It reduces delays and enhances speed.
Picking Out the Right Hosting Solution
Basically, there are 4 web hosting types: shared hosting, virtual private server hosting, dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting. Among them, shared hosting hosts multiple sites. So if a traffic surge happens on any site, it may slow down your site’s speed. A VPS also hosts more than one site, but in it, every site has its own dedicated place. So, select a hosting provider who is famous for speed & reliability and who has enough resources to handle your website’s traffic.
You can also read: Importance of Website Hosting in SEO
Optimize Mobile Performance
As the website’s traffic from mobile is continuously increasing, it is essential that your website is properly tuned for mobile devices. Mobile users also expect as high loading speeds as desktop users. Once you start your web design, always ensure it is going to respond to every screen size. Optimize images and reduce the usage of JavaScript to make it highly mobile responsive.
Conclusion
A responsive and fast site is an imperative factor in user experience enhancement and passing the correct signals to search engines. One can use the above-shared significant tools and tips to improve site speed, drive huge traffic, and acquire high rankings.
But keep this thing in mind: optimization is not only a one-time process; you have to regularly monitor the website’s speed and adapt to new trends to maintain its amazing performance.
At Thanksweb, we believe that every second spent by a website’s visitor counts and helps in converting clicks into customers. That’s why we are here to make websites that offer a better digital experience. So, without delays, supercharge your website with us now!
FAQs About Website Speed
Q. Why does a website need to have a faster loading speed?
Ans. The website speeds matter so much because they provide another kind of better user experience, help in search ranking, and promote the success rate of the overall business.
Q. Does the site’s loading speed affect the SEO?
Ans. Yes. The loading speed matters and it is one of the principal elements affecting SEO. If your site loads fast and retains visitors, thereby reduces bounce rate. It considerably contributes towards increasing visitors’ time spent on your website and helps in getting a higher SEO ranking.
Q. What is the good loading time for any website?
Ans. The good loading time of any website is considered 2.5 seconds however any website that takes less than 3 seconds for loading is considered as a fine.
Q. What makes a website load faster or slower?
Ans. Several factors influence how fast a website loads. They include all kinds of file sizes, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, the number of times the browser needs to make an HTTP request to the server, code quality behind the site, hosting location of the site, and caching of pages.
Q. When should I check the speed of my website?
Ans. Usually, you should check your website once a month. Apart from this, major changes on the site like installing new plugins, selecting a new theme, or adding new content, are a few occasions when one should check the site’s speed. In this way, you can identify existing issues at a very early level before they get worse.