10 Ways To Increase Website Loading Speed

Website loading speed is important for user convenience, conversion, promotion and reputation of the website. The faster the pages load, the better.

Unfortunately, many websites suffer from slow loading. Users get annoyed by long waits and leave such resources. This leads to loss of potential customers and deterioration of behavioral metrics.

In this article, we will look at what affects the loading speed of a site and how to measure it. We will tell you about the new Google INP indicator. We will give 10 recommendations for increasing the loading speed of a site and improving INP.

What affects the loading speed of a website?

The speed of loading a website directly affects the convenience of visitors, their loyalty and desire to return. As well as the promotion and profitability of the project.

Let’s look at the main factors:

Conversion. On slow websites, people are less likely to perform target actions — purchases, subscriptions, and applications. A fast website promotes conversion.

Indexing in search engines. Slow pages are indexed worse by search robots. Consequently, new content takes longer to appear in the search results.

Search ranking. Since 2018, Google has taken site speed into account as one of its ranking factors. Fast sites get an advantage in search results.

Usability. Speed ​​directly affects the convenience of the site. It is difficult to perform actions on a slow resource.

Brand image. A slow website is perceived as a sign of a bad company. A fast one, on the contrary, is perceived as a sign of a reliable and high-quality company.

Traffic. Visitors spend less time on a slow site and return less often.

So, site speed is important for user comfort and the success of the project as a whole.

What is considered a normal website loading speed?

There is no single standard for website loading speed – it depends on the type of resource, its complexity, and the location of visitors. But there are general guidelines:

• For the desktop version of the site, up to 3 seconds is considered normal.
• For the mobile version of the site, it takes up to 2 seconds.

Google recommends that the main content loads in 2-2.5 seconds. Loading times longer than 4-5 seconds are considered bad. Research shows that people notice even a small slowdown of 0.4 seconds and are more likely to prefer a faster site.

That is, the optimal speed is 1-3 seconds. The faster the site loads, the better for user convenience and resource promotion in search engines. Therefore, you need to constantly monitor and optimize the loading speed.

How do you check website loading speed?

Google evaluate in their algorithms how quickly the site pages load. If the site loads slowly – more than 3 seconds – this has a negative effect on its positions in search engines.

Google evaluates the performance of a site using the Core Web Vitals metric, which includes two main indicators:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) – measures the speed of loading the main content on the screen.

• FID (First Input Delay) – measures how quickly a site responds to the user’s first action after the page loads.

These metrics can be viewed in the Google Search Console → “Key Internet Metrics” section.

For example, this is what the LCP indicator will look like if there are deviations:

From this data you can understand what exactly slows down the loading of the site – too heavy images, slow hosting, unoptimized scripts , and so on.

Once problem areas are found, they can be fixed to speed up the site’s loading time and improve search engine rankings.

Replacement of FID indicator with INP in 2024

Starting in March 2024, Google will evaluate the response speed of sites in a new way — through the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric. INP will replace the old FID metric. Company representatives reported this in the Search Console Center Blog. 

INP is a metric that measures how quickly a site responds to user actions. It measures the time from a click to a change on the screen. INP will help you better understand whether it is convenient for users to interact with the site. They should see a quick response.

What is the difference between FID and INP?

FID looks only at the first user action. And INP analyzes the site’s response speed to any user action – not just the first. This makes it a more complete indicator of interactivity.

Google says INP is already live and has been added to reports in the Search Console so that site owners can assess the current situation and prepare. But it will officially become mandatory for optimization starting in March 2024. 

To view the INP value, go to Google Search Console → Core Web Metrics.

How to improve your INP score

If the site is well optimized for the current FID, then most likely it will not have serious problems with INP. But it is better to check this in advance using the reports in Search Console.

And if the INP indicator is low, then it will be necessary to make improvements – optimize scripts, remove unnecessary elements on pages, etc. So that the site responds as quickly as possible to any user actions.

Thus, INP will make the assessment of the quality of sites by the criterion of reaction speed more accurate. And preparation for its implementation in advance will help webmasters create a truly interactive and user-friendly resource.

How to increase website loading speed?

Let’s look at ways to increase site speed. The same recommendations will be relevant for improving the INP indicator.

Method 1. Optimize images

Images often take up most of the page space. Compressing images without losing quality can significantly reduce the page size and speed up its loading.

How to optimize images to speed up website loading:

• Remove unused images from your site. They only add to the overall weight.
• Place compressed images on the site. Use special services for image compression: Image Compressor , compressjpeg , ResizePixel . They can reduce the size of jpeg and png files by 50-70% without losing quality.

• Use WebP and AVIF image formats. They are better compressed than traditional JPEG and PNG. Their weight is usually 2-3 times smaller with the same quality. For example, a 500 KB picture in JPEG can weigh 150 KB in WebP.
• Replace large images with vector images in SVG or CSS formats where possible. For example, for simple icons, logos, illustrations.
• Install plugins for automatic image optimization. They can be found, for example, in the WordPress and other CMS plugin store .

Method 2: Compress CSS and JS files

To speed up the loading of the site, it is worth minifying the code – removing unnecessary characters and elements from CSS and JavaScript files.

For example, comments, multiple spaces, line breaks are removed. Such code becomes smaller in size, but works the same.

Pretty Diff and CSSmin are handy tools for minifying CSS. And UglifyJS and Microsoft Ajax Minifier are good for JavaScript.

There is also a universal compressor, Google Closure Compiler. It optimizes CSS, JS, and HTML code.

Using these programs, you can compress files on the site and save traffic to speed up page loading. However, it is important to test the code for functionality.

As a result of compression, you will have compact files with difficult-to-read code. But for the browser and site functionality, this does not matter. But the loading speed can increase several times due to the smaller size of resources.

Method 3. Using CDN

CDN is a network of servers distributed around the world. They store copies of popular files to serve them to users much faster than a regular server.

They store copies of popular libraries such as jQuery (a library for the JavaScript programming language), Bootstrap (a tool for creating responsive website design), and others.

How it works?

Let’s imagine that you have a site hosted in Moscow. A user from America visits it. If you connect jQuery from your server in Moscow, the file will take a long time to load—it will go through the whole world. But if you connect via CDN, for example, from Google Libraries, then this user will download jQuery from Google’s server in America—faster and closer.

Another advantage is that files from CDN are usually cached in the browser. If a visitor has already been to a site that uses CDN, this file is already in the cache, i.e., downloaded locally on his device. This means the site will open instantly.

Thus, connecting popular javascript libraries via CDN will speed up the loading of your site for visitors from different regions and countries. And will unload your hosting from unnecessary load.

Method 4: Reject unused code

Over time, websites accumulate a lot of unnecessary scripts, styles, and modules that are no longer used but continue to load. These can be:

• Unused plugins and extensions for CMS. They should be completely removed if they are not used.
• Deprecated JavaScript libraries that have been replaced but the old scripts have not been removed.
• Duplicate scripts and styles. Sometimes the same functionality is connected twice in a project due to carelessness.
• Commented sections of code. Comments also affect the page weight.
• Service scripts from development are used only at the stage of website creation.

A thorough audit of the code and the removal of all unnecessary elements can significantly “lose weight” and speed up the site. The main thing is to test and make sure that the removal of this or that code will not break anything.

Method 5. Use caching

Caching allows you to store static data, such as images, CSS, and JS files, on a faster storage device and avoid repeated access to the database or source files.

It works like this:

• The user requests a page of the site with static content for the first time.
• Data is retrieved from the server and simultaneously cached (stored) in the browser’s memory.
• On subsequent requests for the same page, the content will be loaded from the cache, bypassing the database.
• This allows you to unload the database and save server resources.
• The cache is usually stored for a certain period of time and then updated.
• Caching is especially effective for images, stylesheets, javascript files, and template design elements that rarely change.

Setting up caching can improve your site’s loading speed by reducing the load on your server.

Method 6. Reduce the number of requests to the server

Each request to the server takes a certain amount of time to establish a connection and transfer data. Therefore, the fewer requests, the faster the page loads.

To reduce the number of requests, you can:

• Combine several small CSS files into one common stylesheet. This will reduce the number of requested resources.
• You can also consolidate js scripts into one or more large js files.
• Host static resources like images, styles, and scripts on a CDN. This will allow them to be loaded from other servers.
• Use sprites – combining several small images into one picture. Saves queries.
• Enable browser-side caching of static resources to avoid repeated requests for already downloaded data.
• Use lazy loading. Lazy loading is loading scripts, images, and videos on a page as needed. Instead of loading everything at once when the page opens, some elements are loaded later — when you scroll to them. And elements below the visible area are loaded in the background.

Proper organization of server requests can significantly optimize the operation of a site by reducing their number and the volume of data transferred.

Method 7. Use asynchronous content loading

With traditional synchronous loading, the site is displayed only after all components on the page have been fully loaded – text, images, scripts.

Asynchronous loading allows content to be displayed even if the page has not yet fully loaded. This makes the site faster for the user.

For example, you can delay loading images below the screen, showing text first. Or delay loading videos and scripts until the user clicks.

Another example is asynchronous HTML markup using AJAX technology. It loads data from the server in the background without reloading the page.

Using asynchronous methods, you can make the site more lively and dynamic. The user will see useful content faster without waiting for it to load completely. And invisible elements will load later in the background.

Method 8. Enable data compression (GZIP)

GZIP is a lossless data compression method that allows you to reduce the size of HTML, CSS, JS, and image files before sending them to the browser.

It works like this:

• The browser requests a website page.
• The server compresses the page files using GZIP. For example, a 2 MB page becomes 800 KB.
• The compressed page is sent to the browser. Loading is faster due to its smaller size.
• The browser unpacks and displays the page in its original form.

This way, the site’s resources take up less data to transfer, meaning the pages load faster.

Enabling GZIP compression can speed up downloads by 2-3 times. It is a simple and effective way to optimize speed.

Method 9. Switch to a faster hosting

The website loading speed directly depends on the technical characteristics of the hosting servers:

• Budget hosting usually has weak servers that process requests slowly.
• Expensive hosting has powerful servers on SSD, and sites load much faster.

For example, a budget hosting for 200 rubles/month on a weak processor opens a page in 5-10 seconds. A VDS server for 1000 rubles/month on a powerful processor gives the same page in 1-2 seconds.

Therefore, switching to a more expensive but productive hosting can significantly increase the site loading speed. Mainly if the resource is visited by many users.

Method 10. Use HTTP/2 technology

HTTP/2 is a new version of the Internet data transfer protocol. Here are its main advantages:

• Multiplexing. HTTP/2 allows you to send multiple requests at once over a single connection without waiting for a response to the previous one. This saves time on establishing a connection.
• Header compression. Server request and response headers are compressed to reduce the amount of data.
• Request Prioritization: In HTTP/2, the browser can indicate the importance of requests, and the server will process them in priority order.
• Push delivery. The server can send data to the browser on its own initiative without a request.

Thanks to these technologies, HTTP/2 site pages load much faster. Therefore, it is worth setting up HTTP/2 support on the server to speed up the site.

Conclusion

In conclusion, optimizing website loading speed is crucial for enhancing user experience, boosting conversion rates, and improving search engine rankings. By implementing the ten strategies discussed—ranging from image optimization to leveraging HTTP/2 technology—you can significantly improve your site’s performance. For the best results, consider partnering with the best digital marketing services, as they can provide expert guidance and comprehensive solutions to ensure your website not only loads faster but also stands out in a competitive digital landscape.