Low loading speed can negatively affect conversion and other online business metrics.
In this new article, we’ll look at what website loading speed is considered normal, how to measure it, and how to increase it.
Why is slow website loading speed a problem?
Even if a user has a good internet connection, slow loading of your website pages will still occur, and with it, problems: low conversion rates, repeat purchases, and high bounce rates.
Google statistics show that today:
- People interact with websites on mobile devices 2 times more than from desktops, tablets, and even TV;
- 60% of users will not return to the site and purchase goods/services after a negative experience;
- 53% of visits from mobile phones end prematurely if pages take more than 3 seconds to load.
Therefore, task No. 1 in 2019 is to make mobile website loading as fast as possible.
Another important problem is the ranking of the resource by search engines. Previously, Google did not check the optimization of the mobile version, so it did not affect the position of the site. After the launch of Mobile First Index, the situation has changed: if the mobile version of your site takes a long time to load, the desktop version loses its position in the search results.
What is a normal site loading speed?
Google classifies sites into three types:
- with a good loading speed (less than 1 second);
- with an average speed (1-2.1 seconds);
- with a bad one (more than 2.1 seconds).
The indicators for the mobile version of the site are below and are also divided into three types:
- with a good speed (less than 1.6 seconds);
- with an average speed (from 1.6 to 3 seconds);
- with a bad one (more than 3 seconds).
Google only penalizes sites with poor speed, so if the page loading speed is average, there is no reason to panic yet.
Checking the site loading time
You can check the site on one of the special services. They are easy to use: you just need to insert the URL of the site and see the result.
We will show you several such services.
PageSpeed Insights
This is a minimalistic service from Google. It allows you to quickly determine the loading speed of pages on PCs and smartphones based on its own recommendations.
The service evaluates the loading speed and indicates the level of optimization of the site and indicators that can be improved.
*our website's score on the PageSpeed Insights service. Our site has a good loading speed.
Pingdom Tools
The service allows you to:
- quickly analyze the site;
- see a detailed description of the problems that slow down the site loading;
- track the history of site performance;
- find errors in time and fix them;
- View the size of the content by content type and domain.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix resembles Pingdom Tools, but the report about the speed of loading the site looks more convenient. You can see:
- server location;
- page load speed;
- queries;
- site speed dynamics (stores all versions of the analysis).
Speed up resource loading
There are many ways to speed up resource loading. We will consider the main ones.
Compress large pages
You can use the GZip tool to do this. It reduces the amount of data that the browser transmits to the user. This can reduce the amount of data and increase the speed of loading the site.
It is possible that your site is already using the GZip tool. You can check this in PageSpeed Insights.
Replace the image format
Large images slow down page loading, so we recommend using JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP images. Images in these formats will load faster and consume less traffic than PNG and JPEG.
*photo optimization using Photoshop. To do this, select "File-Save for Web" from the menu (in some versions of the program - "File-Export-Save for Web"). In the window, the user can change the percentage of photo quality (1). For optimization, it is recommended to set this value from 60 to 100. You can also change the photo resolution (2). Both of these parameters affect the final "weight" of the image.
You can also use a special plugin for WordPress, which will automatically convert the image to the optimal format.
Reduce the number of requests from the browser to the server
Unnecessary elements increase page loading time. There are several ways to reduce loading time:
- remove unnecessary elements that overload the site (images, JavaScript files);
- combine some elements into a CSS sprite;
- Use caching (the browser will store data on the computer and reload it during repeated visits to the site).
Simplify JavaScript and CSS code
Congested sites take longer to load pages. There are 3 ways to improve loading times:
- check the code and clean it up;
- Place CSS components at the beginning of the page (so that they are displayed gradually, rather than as separate components);
- Move JavaScript code to the end of the page (so that the browser will first load the text and images of the pages, and then the scripts).
Reduce the distance from the user to the server
The distance from your computer to the server affects the speed of page loading. You can reduce the distance and increase the speed of page loading by using content delivery networks (CDNs) (for example, Incapsula). Such networks load web files from the nearest server.
Change hosting
If you have taken all the points into account, and the site still loads slowly, we recommend checking the server response time. This can be done in Google Analytics. The acceptable server response time is 0.2 seconds. If pages take longer to load, there is only one way out - to change hosting.
Conclusions
Page loading time affects the number of visits, search engine rankings, and conversion. If pages take a long time to load, it is easier for the user to switch to another site.
To increase these indicators, you need to:
- Check the resource loading speed (links to services in the article);
- identify the site's weaknesses;
- Make changes (for example, change the size of images).
