5 Ways to Improve Website Performance

Are you looking for ways to improve website performance? If so, you're in luck! In this blog post, we will discuss five easy ways that you can boost your website's speed and performance. Improving website performance is important for a number of reasons. Not only does it make your website look better to visitors, but it can also help increase conversions and improve SEO rankings. Let's get started!

1. Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider

Your web hosting provider has a big impact on the performance of your website. If you're using a shared hosting plan, then your site will be sharing resources with other websites on the same server. This can lead to slower speeds and more downtime if another site on the server is experiencing high traffic.

If possible, upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server so that your website has its own resources and isn't affected by other sites on the same server.

Here are a few web hosting companies that we recommend:

• Kinsta
• Krystal
• Cloudways

2. Optimize Your Images

Images are an important part of any website, but they can also be one of the biggest culprits when it comes to slow loading times.

Make sure that all of your images are compressed and saved in the correct file format before uploading them to your website. This will help ensure that they load quickly and don't bog down your site.

You can either try to optimise images before uploading them on your website, or you can use a WordpPress plugin like ShortPixel that does the job for you.

3. Minimize HTTP Requests

Every time someone visits your website, their browser has to send an HTTP request to your server in order to load the page. The more files that your page consists of (CSS, JavaScript, images, etc.), the more requests have to be made, and this can lead to slower loading times.

Minimize HTTP requests by using CSS sprites for images, combining CSS and JavaScript into single files, and using tools like Gzip to compress files before sending them to the browser.

A caching plugin can help with most of the things mentioned above. We normally use and recommend WP Rocket, however, it is also important to use a good WordPress Stack of tools: themes & plugins which are highly optimised.

4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN is a network of servers located around the world that deliver content to visitors based on their geographical location. Using a CDN can help improve loading times for visitors who are located far away from your server because they'll be able to load content from a nearby server instead of having to make a long trip across the globe.

Setting up a CDN can be complex, so if you're not comfortable doing it yourself, give us a shout, and we'll be more than happy to help.

5. Enable Browser Caching 

Browser caching allows visitors to store certain files from your website on their computers so that they don't have to download them every time they visit your site.

This can reduce loading times because the visitor's browser won't have to send as many HTTP requests since some of the files will already be stored locally. You can enable browser caching by adding some code to your .htaccess file or using a plugin like WP Rocket, mentioned above if you're using WordPress.

Conclusion 

These are just a few ways that you can improve the performance of your website. By taking these steps, you can ensure that your site is running as efficiently as possible and providing a good experience for your visitors. Remember, even small improvements in performance can make a big difference for your business!