Many websites have a poor page loading speed making them clunky and take a long time to load. Sometimes this will mean the user is sitting there twiddling their thumbs for a few seconds before the page finishes loading. Other times, on really slow websites, this might mean that certain images or style scripts don’t finish loading causing the website to look a bit cray cray.

Often poor load time can be due to the user’s poor Internet connection and therefore nothing can be done by the website owner to amend this. If this is the case, chances are the user is experiencing the same issue on all websites they visit while their Internet connection is slow.

On the flip side, if the user’s Internet connection is good then there are likely to be a few things we can fix on the website to make it load a whole lot faster.

So why is your page load speed important?

Having a speedy website improves your user experience (UX)
Having a website that loads quickly on all devices is essential for converting your website traffic into paying customers. Studies have found 40% of people will leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Furthermore, as little as a 1 second delay in page response can result in a reduction in conversions of 7%*.

Fast website load speeds improve your SEO rankings
Your website load time not only improves your UX, it is also regarded highly by Google and other search engines and can vastly improve your search engine rankings.

How can we improve your website load speed?

There are many tasks we carry out here at Hola to improve website load times. These include:

1. Image Optimisation
2. Compression
3. Browser Caching
4. Minify HTML
5. Minify CSS
6. Minify JS
7. Optimise CSS
8. Optimise JS
9. Above Fold Optimisation

Using these tools, we often increase website load speeds by 30–50%. This translates not only into an increase in traffic coming to the website, but an increase in the website conversion rate as well.

So what’s the process exactly?

If you’re a tad geeky like us you might be curious about what Hola’s process entails. How exactly do we attain these results for our clients? Well, as luck would have it we recently put together a website speed case study on the tasks we carried out for one of our clients. So if sinking your teeth into the finer details really floats your boat… then grab a cuppa and have a read.

The Website Speed Case Study

RESULTS
Loading Speed Before:

• Mobile: 44/100 (http://www.screencast.com/t/jMy8md0QvsUJ)
• Desktop: 58/100 (http://www.screencast.com/t/pcHO6r7A)

Loading Speed After:

• Mobile: 63/100 (http://screencast.com/t/8zHEjKEOEcg) = 43% increase in website load speed
• Desktop: 84/100 (http://screencast.com/t/6rIAcfAb2) = 45%increase in website load speed

ISSUES FIXED

1. Image Optimisation
2. Compression
3. Browser Caching
4. Minify HTML
5. Minify CSS
6. Minify JS
7. Optimise CSS
8. Optimise JS
9. Above Fold Optimisation

STEP BY STEP PAGE LOAD SPEED PROCESS

STEP 1: Image Optimisation

• Optimisation of images without loss of quality
• All possible images optimised

Loading Speed Before This Process:

• Mobile: 44/100 (http://www.screencast.com/t/jMy8md0QvsUJ)
• Desktop: 58/100 (http://www.screencast.com/t/pcHO6r7A)

Loading Speed After This Process:

• Mobile : 44/100 (http://screencast.com/t/1RgoRiUcG)
• Desktop : 63/100 (http://screencast.com/t/K5z13Ri8h)

STEP 2: Browsing Caching & Compression

• Browsing Caching
• Page Cache
• Database Cache
• Object Cache
• GZip Compression

All sources covered. Only sources left:

• external sources: http://screencast.com/t/4wTLEagITbA. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything to improve external sources.

Loading Speed Before This Process:

• Mobile : 44/100 (http://screencast.com/t/1RgoRiUcG)
• Desktop : 63/100 (http://screencast.com/t/K5z13Ri8h)

Loading Speed After This Process:

• Mobile : 62/100 (http://screencast.com/t/MwUH2aR9uXCL)
• Desktop : 81/100 (http://screencast.com/t/R9X3WuoJUh)

STEP 3: Minification & Optimisation of HTMl, CSS, JS

• JS Minified
• CSS Minified
• HTML Minified
• CCS Optimised
• JS Optimised

All sources covered. Only sources left:

• external sources: some JS & CSS files: http://screencast.com/t/AiFp5MYj. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything to improve external sources.

Loading Speed Before This Process:

• Mobile : 62/100 (http://screencast.com/t/MwUH2aR9uXCL)
• Desktop : 81/100 (http://screencast.com/t/R9X3WuoJUh)

Loading Speed After This Process:

• Mobile: 63/100 (http://screencast.com/t/8zHEjKEOEcg)
• Desktop: 84/100 (http://screencast.com/t/6rIAcfAb2)

THE END RESULT
Out of 10 rules:

• 7 are 100% passed: http://screencast.com/t/nj9AJ222M
• 2 are 95% passed (Only external sources and cache files remain unoptimised. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything to improve external sources.)
• 1 rule cannot be fixed as it’s related to the design of the website. In this case we have prioritised the website’s content.

Again in comparison, here are the results before and after performing these load speed improvements on the website:

Loading Speed Before:

• Mobile: 44/100 (http://www.screencast.com/t/jMy8md0QvsUJ)
• Desktop: 58/100 (http://www.screencast.com/t/pcHO6r7A)

Loading Speed After:

• Mobile: 63/100 (http://screencast.com/t/8zHEjKEOEcg) = 43% increase in website load speed
• Desktop: 84/100 (http://screencast.com/t/6rIAcfAb2) = 45%increase in website load speed

Want to vastly improve the load speed of your website for as little as $250? Get in touch today!

*Statistics from https://www.kissmetrics.com