Top Ten Ways To Speed Up Your Website

chillibreeze writer — Vikram Sejpal

Who wants to explore a slow website? Let’s face it. A slow website can turn away visitors and harm its popularity and credibility. In today’s fast-paced world, where time is money, no one likes to waste his or her time on a website, which takes ages to load or has arduous navigation. Anyone visiting a website is looking for something in particular, be it information, products or services. More often than not, those who are surfing the net are in a hurry. Thus, speed can be a crucial reason for the success or failure of a website. While a slow website can make visitors lose interest, a fast one will hold their attention and encourage them to spend more time exploring its various aspects.

So, what can be done to increase the speed of a website? Well, anyone interested in creating a faster website should adhere to certain time-tested rules.

1. DON’T USE TOO MANY GRAPHICS

One of the main reasons for a website’s slow download speed is the excessive use of graphics. Therefore, you must try to reduce the number of images and pictures used on each page. Consider repeating the same graphic, wherever possible. This is because once a graphic has been downloaded, it is stored in a computer’s cache and doesn’t have to be downloaded again.

2. USE HTML TEXT

Try to use regular HTML text instead of graphic text, as its size is much smaller than the latter. Regular HTML text will decrease your page size, making the download quicker.

3. USE COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES

Another way to make your website load fast is compressing the images. You can usually reduce a GIF or JPEG image by 40% to 50% without losing any significant definition or sharpness.

4. REDUCE THE NUMBER OF COLORS

To increase the download speed of your website, reduce the number of colors used in the graphics. Using fewer colors will bring down the size of the graphics significantly.

5. HEIGHT AND WIDTH TAGS

Include height and width tags on your page graphics source tags. This will prompt the browser to pre-allocate the space needed for the graphics, enabling a user to see a page more quickly.

6. REDUCE CODING

Spaces and redundant tags in HTML add to the size of files. Therefore, try to eliminate superfluous HTML coding. While scanning your HTML code to check its effectiveness can be a painful task, it can save up to 30% of your download time.

7. AVOID FLASH

Avoid using Flash, unless it is necessary. Usually, Flash files are quite large, and they can significantly increase download time.

8. USE CSS

Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for the website layout. Web pages using CSS are usually much smaller in size than those using tabular layouts. It's not unusual to see reductions of 50% or more in file size when switching from tables to CSS.

9. USE RELATIVE URLs

Try to use relative URLs instead of absolute URLs if all the pages are on the same server. This will make the file size smaller and reduce page download time.

10. AVOID FREE HOSTING

The server speed of your web site host will influence the speed of your web site's download. Avoid "free" hosting. Free hosts tend to be oversubscribed and lack the resources to provide fast and reliable servers.

As a thumb rule, a website should not take longer than 30 to 40 seconds to download. If you have never paid attention to the speed of your website, it is time for you to do it now. By incorporating the techniques mentioned above, you can speed up your website significantly!

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article.

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—About our writer:

Vikram is an ardent traveller, his love for nature knows no bounds. Be it snow-clad mountains, cascading rivers, lush green forests or warm sunny beaches, he loves them all.

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