When you visit a website you expect it to load pretty quickly. Your site visitors do not want to sit there and wait for the content to load. In this day and age, instant gratification is a given. Here are some tips on how to decrease your page load time.
1. Optimize Your Images
When using the right file type for your images you will decrease the file size, which in turn, allows for a faster download. Here are the most popular file types for images and what they should be used for:
- GIF: images with few colors like logos
- JPEG: mainly used for photographs and for images that have many colors.
- PNG: very useful for when you need transparency in your images.
2. Put Style Sheet References at the Top
When you place your CSS files in the
of your document, it allows the browser to render the styles progressively while the page loads; giving your visitor a feel for a faster viewing experience.3. Load scripts at the Bottom
As opposed to where you should load your style sheets, loading your scripts at the bottom allows the browser to avoid blocking anything else below it on the initial loading of the page. The browser can only download two components per hostname at a time.
4. Use External References
If you put your styles and scripts inline, these will be downloaded every time the page is loaded. To avoid causing this extra time, place your styles and scripts in external files and reference them according to points 2 and 3.
5. Use a CDN (content distribution network)
When using common libraries like jQuery, you can find many networks that will host these files for you such as Google. When you use a CDN file, chances are the visitor to your site will already have this file in their cache. The result? Faster load time.
6. Cache Your Pages
When you cache your site, the visitor has a static version of it on their machine. When they hit that page again, they are presented with this version. If your website has a lot of dynamic content, you would want to clear your cache every so often so the user gets the latest.
Taking these steps will give your site a nice boost in performance. When you use MixxCreative, you get all of this and more. Request an estimate today and get your business online.
