Why website performance matters.
Website performance is a measure of how quickly the pages load and display in the web browser. And, it’s the first event that all visitors experience. Poor website performance can reverberate through an entire organisation with far-reaching consequences.
- Your search rank (SEO) takes a knock
Sites with lower performance scores are pushed down the rankings. - Visitors give up (and leave)
53% of mobile users will abandon a page that loads in more than three seconds. - Your brand (and credibility) is damaged
A noticeably slow website stirs up assumptions that damage your credibility and brand image. - Visitors bounce (without looking)
Two extra seconds of load time more than doubles a page’s bounce rate. - Users have a bad experience
Waiting for content to load frustrates users and may prompt them to leave your site altogether. - Conversions (and bottom line) suffer
Studies show that, for every second of load time, conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42%.
Suggested process
As there are may variables involved in the performance of a website, it’s not possible to resolve all issues for all participants. But, there are common issues that can be resolved collectievely, and doing so will mean that the
1. Performance audit.
You can’t fix a problem that you can’t see. So, let’s start with a performance audit that tells us how well each collaborators website is currently performing and what can be improved. This will provide all involved with a benchmark report which we can use as the baseline for our optimisations and to measure the success of the project.
2. Take care of the fundamentals.
There are some performance solutions that quite simply should just be in place on any website. But, the evidence suggests that the fundamentals have been overlooked on 60% of the sectors websites. So, armed with the audit reports for each site, our next step is to implement the fundamental solutions, for example:Â
- GZIP compression
Compressing pages and style sheets before sending them over to the browser. - Browser Caching
Store temporary data on visitors’ devices so they don’t download the same assets twice. - Database Clean up Automation
Implement tools to remove unnecessary functions, plugins and temporary files. - CDN Configuration
Distributing and delivering cached versions of content close to where each visitor is. - Setup Lazy Load
Stopping offscreen images from loading until a visitor scrolls to them. - Implement WebP Image Formatting
Superior compression making images smaller, richer and faster to load. - Image Optimisation
Compress, resize and display the best version of each image for the users’ browser.
3. Asset optimisation.
Plugins, themes and integrations all include CSS, JavaScript, font files etc. These files need to be loaded into the browser for the web page to be displayed. We need to take each these files combine and minify them on a case-by-case basis until as fewer requests are made upon the server as possible whilst rendering the page.
Whilst this is likely to be the most time consuming part of the project, as each site will have different features, plugins etc, experience tells us that there is also likely to be a significant crossover of optimisations between sites, which makes collaboration the obvious approach.
4. Handover & Training
You want your website to be running at optimal performance all of the time. But you are also creating content, restructuring, posting, editing and updating regularly (hopefully). And, with the best will in the world content editors and administrators can do things that hinder website performance.
To help combat this, following optimisation, we’ll furnish your team with the tools and knowledge to identify, understand and minimise their impact on performance going forward.
