Priority to the loading speed of a site

Loading speed has become one of the most important criteria in web strategy. And this for two main reasons: Internet users are less and less patient and Google considers the display speed as a major differentiation criterion.

In terms of web strategy, reducing the page load time of a website can optimize three growth levers:

The optimization of natural referencing (SEO)
Improving the user experience (UX)
The increase in sales

The optimization of natural referencing

Googlebot and response time

When the Googlebot (robot) scans a site, it allocates it a referencing that depends on several criteria (importance of the site, relevance of the content, display speed, etc.). If the site is not optimized and the response time of the server is too long, the robot takes longer to perform this indexing … which affects its profitability! It is this deficit that pushes Google to value the sites whose opening is the fastest.

Internet user behavior

The other reason why Google favors sites with a fast display is because of the users: 57% of Internet users believe that a site should load in less than 3 seconds! In this context, Google monitors their behavior very carefully to assign its SEO ranking. When a user performs a search and clicks on a result, certain circumstances may lead him to return to the search results (lack of relevance of the page, speed of opening pages too slow, site considered dubious, etc.). This backtracking (Pogosticking) is a key indicator taken into account by the Google ranking algorithm.

Improving the user experience (UX)

Long page load times frustrate users. This frustration invariably results in high bounce rates (abandoning the action). On the other hand, improving the user experience (UX) linked to the display speed optimizes the chances of closing sales. When display times are fast, the site benefits from a more sustained traffic and a longer visit time per user (which favors brand awareness and memorization).

The increase of your sales

The fluidity of traffic increases the number of pages consulted and offers the visitor the opportunity to find the product he wants more easily. Impulse and spontaneous purchases are also boosted if the visitor has the possibility to access the product and the shopping cart quickly.

7 tips to optimize page loading

Invest in a good web hosting

When it comes to web hosting, it is better to choose a dedicated server than a shared server. Although less expensive, shared hosting has the disadvantage of storing several websites on the same server. As a result, the performance of the server – especially in terms of speed – is inversely proportional to the number of sites it hosts. The choice of a dedicated server is therefore highly recommended… because the few extra euros invested will quickly pay off.

Analyze the loading time

Before implementing the measures that will allow you to accelerate the display of a site, it is better to proceed to a preliminary analysis. To perform this audit, Google has developed “PageSpeed Insights”, a tool that analyzes the performance of a site and suggests ways to improve. The tool assigns two scores out of 100 to the page: the first concerns the analysis of the mobile interface and the second that of the desktop. Note that for the analysis of the mobile interface, it is now preferable to use the tool “Test my page” from Google.

Update scripts

It is about reducing the size and weight of an application or a web page by intervening on its code (in particular JavaScript, CSS and HTML). This simplification consists in intervening on elements that can be eliminated without harming the understanding. As the code is lightened, the display performance of the site improves. For this operation, 3 options are possible:

Enable script compression using a tool like Minifier HTML / CSS / JS for example.
Optimize the CSS files that are uploaded by the server before the page itself. For this operation, it is necessary to remove all superfluous elements from your files (spaces, useless data, etc.).
Arrange the scripts at the bottom of the page (below the waterline) so that the content is loaded first, before loading the scripts. .

Optimize the image format

Four image formats are displayed correctly on all browsers: JPEG, GIF, PNG and WEBP (recommended). To reduce the impact of these images on the bandwidth (maximum capacity of the internet connection), two operations are required: resize and compress.

Resize

When you change the size of your images directly on the CMS, the original image remains as “heavy” (the graphic details are preserved) but appears in a reduced format. To reduce its weight and obtain the best “useful” size, it is preferable to use photo software like Photoshop. These tools allow you to view the image at its real size. You can adjust the dimensions by taking advantage of the angle of view that the Internet users will have on the web page. You just have to save the image at the desired size before importing it on the CMS.

Compress

When an image is compressed, the browser adapts its weight to the required size. To do this, you can use software like PhotoShop, XnView or TinyPNG. Some tools like WordPress and Prestashop have a TinyPNG module. This feature allows you to compress your images directly from your CMS.

Make videos lighter

Just like for photos, reducing the weight of videos is essential to speed up the opening of a website’s pages. This operation requires a few easily applicable manipulations:

Host the video on Youtube or Videmo and integrate them on your website
Reduce the width of the video
Compressing video with software like Adobe Premiere
Delete the audio track if it is not needed
Choose a good lightweight format like MP4

Allow resource caching

Visiting a site requires the loading of certain elements that will slow down the opening of the pages. By caching certain resources, the browser saves data that will not have to be downloaded on each visit. When changes or updates to the page are necessary, only the new elements are loaded. This operation makes navigation more fluid and increases loading speeds.

Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

The speed of loading a site also depends on the geographical proximity of the server. In this logic, networks that benefit from CDN (Content Delivery Network) technology are made up of several computers located in different places on Earth. These computers cooperate to make the content more easily accessible and thus increase the loading speed. This opportunity is primarily aimed at sites with international audiences and large budgets.

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