Are your pages taking too long to load? Having a high-performing site has become essential for a business. Web performance has repercussions for your organic search rankings, the user experience and, of course, your sales. In this article, we are going to explore the essential aspects of web performance, how to assess it and, above all, how to improve it!
Web performance: what are we talking about?
Web performance refers to all the actions and optimisations aimed at improving the speed and efficiency with which a website displays and works for users.
In concrete terms, this includes aspects such as page load time, server responsiveness, and how smoothly the site can be browsed, whether on desktop or mobile.
The objective is to minimise the delay between the moment a user requests a page and the moment it is fully displayed.
Why does your website’s performance matter?
Ideally, a website should load in under two seconds. Indeed, 47% of consumers expect pages to load within that time (1). Beyond that, impatience sets in and the visitor is likely to leave your site before even exploring a single page.
Google has clearly understood this: load speed is a key criterion for SEO, notably with the PageSpeed algorithm. What is more, every additional second of load time can reduce your conversions by 7% (2), directly affecting your sales.
Another aspect that is often overlooked is the crawl budget. Search engines such as Google allocate a certain amount of time to exploring your site. If your pages take too long to load, this limits the amount of content the engines will be able to index, thereby affecting your online visibility.
Neglecting your pages’ load speed and your crawl budget can therefore be a serious mistake, both for your performance and for your SEO!
(1) https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/fr-fr/
(2) https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/learn-seo/page-speed/
What causes a slow website?
On slow sites, we often find the same mistakes:
- Too many unnecessary plugins or extensions
- Heavy or unoptimised images
- No caching enabled
And those are just the most common causes.
However, these factors are not the only ones to blame. The web server configuration (Apache, Nginx, etc.) also plays a crucial role in your site’s performance. A poorly configured server can considerably slow down page loading, even if the rest of the site is optimised. In addition, a website draws on a multitude of resources in order to display correctly in a browser: images, dynamic content, CSS files, JavaScript scripts, and so on. Certain external resources, such as fonts or third-party services, can also slow down your site without you realising it.
In short, performance problems often stem from a combination of factors, and an in-depth analysis is needed to identify the exact cause.
A slow or unavailable site: the tools for assessing it
To measure a page’s load speed, one of the most revealing indicators is Time To First Byte (TTFB). This technical performance indicator measures latency — in other words, the time a server takes to return the first byte of data after a user has made a request.
Put simply, Time To First Byte shows how responsive your server is. If this time is too long, it means your site takes a while to load, which affects the user experience.
There are several simple, effective tools for testing TTFB and many other aspects of your site’s performance.
Google PageSpeed Insights
One of the most popular tools is Google PageSpeed Insights. Free and easy to use, you simply enter the URL of the page you want to test and it gives you a performance score for both the mobile and desktop versions.
PageSpeed Insights also analyses every element that is slowing your page down and offers detailed recommendations for improving load speed, such as optimising your images or reducing HTTP requests in order to speed up your website’s performance.
GTmetrix
Another widely used tool is GTmetrix. It goes further by providing detailed reports on every aspect of your page’s load time, including TTFB, the number of requests, and file sizes.
Bonus: you will be able to see where the real problem lies on each page and track how your performance evolves over time.
GTmetrix is a paid tool, but it offers plenty of features available free of charge.
Pingdom Website Speed Test
If you need to test your site’s speed from different locations around the world, Pingdom Website Speed Test is a comprehensive, very well designed monitoring tool. It allows you to see how your site behaves for users located far from your main server. For example, if your server is based in Europe, Pingdom can show you how quickly your site loads in the United States or in Asia.
If you need to go further, the paid version of the tool provides an exhaustive report with all the elements on your page that are slowing down loading, along with avenues for improvement.
How can you make your site load faster?
To improve your website’s performance right now, apply these 5 pieces of advice. Every optimisation, however small, contributes to better overall performance for your site. Put end to end, they quickly deliver results!
1. Choose suitable hosting
In practice, the host is rarely the main cause of a site’s slowness. However, it can sometimes play a part, especially if your traffic exceeds the capacity of the server you have chosen, or if you have not opted for the right hosting solution.
For example, a high-traffic site hosted on a shared server could suffer from slowdowns, because the server’s resources are shared between several users.
Another case: a server located abroad relative to your main audience could create additional latency.
So opting for a host offering fast servers and good bandwidth is essential to guarantee optimal performance, especially if your site attracts a lot of visitors or contains a lot of content.
2. Enable caching
Caching makes it possible to temporarily store certain resources from your site, such as images, CSS files and JavaScript, directly on the user’s device. However, it is at server level that you configure how long these resources should be kept in the browser cache (for example, 30 or 60 days for fonts).
For WordPress, plugins such as WP Rocket or WP Fastest Cache handle server caching. They pre-generate an HTML version of pages in order to reduce demands on the server and speed up response time. This reduces PHP/MySQL resource usage while improving overall performance.
On WordPress, you can enable caching using a plugin such as WP Rocket or WP Fastest Cache (free).
3. Compress your visuals and media
On the internet, there is no point having high-definition images that weigh your site down. Always remember to compress your images to a reasonable size and use optimised formats such as WebP. Bear in mind, however, that WebP is not supported by very old browsers. Although this format has been widely supported by all recent browsers since 2020, it can be useful to plan for an alternative format such as .svg to guarantee optimal compatibility with all users.
Where possible, use illustrations rather than photos. Illustrations, which are often lighter, can easily be compressed and adapted without losing visual quality.
4. Optimise the code
Minifying your site’s HTML, CSS and JS code will save you a lot of time!
This involves lightening the code by removing unnecessary characters (spaces, line breaks, etc.) to make files lighter and faster to load.
On WordPress, this task can easily be automated using a plugin such as WP Rocket. The tool automatically compresses your site’s code without you needing to intervene manually.
5. Minimise requests to the database and to third-party services
To reduce latency, limit calls to the database as much as possible, along with the use of third-party services — external features hosted outside your site. These services, such as Google Fonts, Google Analytics, social media widgets or payment services such as Stripe or PayPal, can result in additional round trips between your site and external servers, thereby increasing Time To First Byte.
If some of these features are not essential, consider disabling or limiting them. The less your site depends on these external requests, the faster it will load.
About Numendo
Numendo is a digital services company with 360° expertise in IT and web consulting. It offers a wide range of services, from web and mobile development to UX/UI, as well as technical project management and quality assurance. Numendo supports its clients in creating e-commerce sites, high-traffic sites, and web or mobile applications with solutions tailored to specific needs, all using agile methodologies and a user-oriented approach.
Would you like personalised support to audit and improve your website’s performance?
Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs and find the right solution for your project!
