Have you ever been stuck behind someone driving so slow, it feels like they're practically crawling like the Flintstones?
It's frustrating, to say the least. On the web, slow websites give people the same experience and feeling: it annoys them. The only difference is that online, people can easily click the back button or 'X' button, and get rid of your business/offer/website instantly. Bottom line: having a fast website is important. So how can you make your company's website faster? Let's dive into some major and minor tweaks to help increase your site's speed:
Not all hosting plans are created equal. While Shared Hosting plans are great to start out with, as your company grows you are going to want dedicated and higher performance hosting. If you're using WordPress, we use (and HIGHLY) recommend WP Engine. Switching the hosting to WP Engine helped increase my personal blog's website speed by 90.03%. For WordPress websites, these guys are the best. If your website isn't a WordPress website - or if you're just interested in researching some other options - check out Synthesis or dedicated hosting on Bluehost.
When you upload any rasterized images to your website, it's best to compress and crop the image to the exact dimensions that that image will be displayed at one the site. For example, let's say you have a 1500x1500 raster image of your office building. The spot on your website (where this image will be placed) is only 800x500. If you upload this raster image at it's current size, it will slow down your website, because the browser will have to reformat it to correct dimensions (which slows your website's load time). It is best to first crop/resize the office building photo to 800x500 - the exact dimensions it will be displayed on the website - and then upload the image to the website. Optimizing images for your website, by compressing and appropriately resizing, will greatly help improve your website's speed.
It's also a good idea to check your speed before (and after) you make any changes. This way, you'll know what's truly working in improving your site's speed. Free website speed tools like Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insights, and GTMetrix are great for this.
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