Page speed and how to improve it
Having trouble with page speed on Gzip your site? Here are a few ways to improve your page speed.
Enable compression
Using a Gzip, or a file compressor, will reduce the size of your HTML, CSS and JavaScript files that exceed 150 bytes. Where image files are concerned, compress in Photoshop, this way you can preserve control over the quality of the image.
Strip down HMTL, JavaScript and CSS
Optimise your code to increase page speed by removing spaces and unnecessary characters as well as formatting and unused code. Google particularly recommend UglifyJS and CSSNano to achieve this.
Optimise images
Your images should be no larger than they absolutely need to be and in the right format. PNGs are recommended for graphics that use less than 16 colours, whilst JPEGS are generally better for photographs. Using CSS sprites will combine an image you wish to upload into one bigger image than loads at once, resulting in less HTTP requests. You will be saving load time as users will not have to wait for multiple images to load.
Leverage browser caching
Browsers accumulate a lot of information in the form of images, stylesheets, JavaScript files, to name a few examples. This is because when a visitor returns to your site, the browser avoids needing to reload the entire page. You can use a tool called YSlow to check if you already have an expiration date for your storage supply, then set your ‘expires’ header for how long you would like that information to be stored. A sensible period is around a year unless your site design changes.
Want to give your users the best and hassle-free online experience? Page speed is certainly something to think about. Why not get in touch with us at Hooked On Media and we can take a look at your site, helping you to identify the areas of improvement. Our campaigns can be adjusted to your budget and our experience can be tailored to businesses big or small, local or worldwide.
