How do you optimize your website for speed and performance and how does it affect conversions?

In an increasingly crowded online landscape, speed load is a key aspect to take into account. Remember there are many others who offer the same or similar products or services and potential/ current customers will check others if a business does not provide them with an excellent user experience.

By optimizing many of my client's website's performance, loading speed, and Core Web Vitals, we witnessed a substantial increase in conversions. The previous slow-loading sites led to higher bounce rates and frustrated visitors. After implementing various performance optimization techniques, such as image compression, caching, and code optimization, the websites became significantly faster. This improvement resulted in reduced bounce rates, longer visitor engagement, and ultimately, a noticeable boost in conversions. The correlation between website speed and conversions highlighted the importance of prioritizing speed optimization for maximizing business growth.

Speed and performance aren't just tech jargon; they're make-or-break for your website's success. Think about it – nobody likes to wait. Google says the average mobile page takes 22 seconds to load, but if you make users wait over 3 seconds, more than half are gone. Each extra second of loading can slash your conversions by 7%. That's huge. On the flip side, a website that’s quick and smooth keeps visitors happy, engaged, and coming back for more. In the digital world, speed isn’t just a feature; it’s the foundation of a great user experience and solid SEO. Keep it quick, keep it slick, and watch your conversions climb.

Imagine walking into an empty coffee shop - just you and a bored-looking barista. You get to the counter and place your order, but: *crickets* They ignore you. You wait a little, maybe you ask again, just in case they didn't hear you. But you get the same response. So, you turn and walk out - no point sticking around when there are other options nearby, right? It's exactly the same with your website - if your content takes too long to load, your users will simply hit 'back' and go to the next result on the the SERP.

To give an example, a Vice President of a large company I chatted to told me, For every 100 milliseconds (0.1 of a second) it took for the website to load, that translated to a $10 million loss in turnover. If your website takes longer than 2 seconds to load, you need to try and reduce the load time as a matter of priority.

There is no perfect way to test a site's speed against its performance. That said, one way you can consider is adding a delay to your site to see what that does - but remember this is just a directional/ illustrative test because it ignores the delays you already have. But sometimes it's worth doing to show people that a slower site usually performs worse - especially for purchases that aren't essential to the customer.

Measuring your website's speed and performance is step one in the optimization game. You can't fix what you don't know, right? Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, and WebPageTest are your new best friends. They'll give you the lowdown on where your site stands, scoring it on loading speed, interactivity, and stability. Plus, they throw in some tips on accessibility and best practices. Think of these tools as your website's health checkup. They pinpoint the weak spots, so you know exactly what to buff up. Remember, in the fast-paced online world, speed isn't just a bonus; it's a must-have for keeping visitors hooked and conversions high.

Please keep in mind using these tools is that they are used for testing . Check rum or crux data for real users metrics. Try to see how your website speed is in your target market and focus on that

In optimizing website performance, tools like Lighthouse offer a quick snapshot and preliminary report on critical metrics such as loading times, interactivity, and accessibility. While these tools are essential for identifying areas that need attention, developers must not solely rely on metrics. It's imperative to consider the unique requirements of the website and go beyond numerical evaluations. This involves a closer examination of the user experience, code efficiency, and alignment with the website's specific objectives.

There are a ton of tools you can use to see how fast a web page loads. But, I love extensions because they give you the information you're looking for, without you needing to do anything. If you're using Chrome, just hit the jigsaw puzzle-shaped icon on the right of the navigation bar, then 'Manage Extensions' and search for 'Page Load Time'. You're welcome!

In optimizing images and videos, modern formats like WebP and WebM are essential. WebP images are 26% smaller than PNGs, and WebM offers an efficient video alternative, without compromising quality. These formats improve website speed and user experience, potentially boosting conversions by meeting today's web speed expectations. Beyond WebP and WebM, solutions like SpeedSize can further optimize media with up to 99% size reduction while preserving visual quality. Such solutions rely on AI to remove unseen data, and significantly decrease file sizes. WebP, WebM, and AI optimizations, all enhance site speed and user experience, boosting conversion potential.

Images and videos are often the culprits in the slow-loading crime. Resize and compress them to shed those extra digital pounds. Pick the right image/video formats. Go responsive, so your visuals look great on any device. And don't forget lazy loading. Use a CDN to serve up your content fast, no matter where your users are.

In addition to lazy loading of images (so the images don't load until the user scrolls down to them), other ways you can reduce the file size of images are: - Reduce the size of the original image to the size you want it to display. For example, resizing it from a 2000 x 2000 pixel image to one that you actually need which might be 300 x 300. - Reduce the saturation of the colours in your image. - Compress the images an image compressor tool like tinypng.com

An often-forgotten part of optimizing a page for speed is making sure images and videos are optimized. There are a few different file types to consider, but the most commonly used are: JPEG: Ideal for photographs and realistic images. Aim for a file size between 20-200 KB. PNG: Best for images with transparency or text. Aim for under 100-300 KB. MP4: For web use, try to keep short videos under 5 MB. The good news if you have images and content to shrink, is that there are lots of free tools around to help you. Just type 'image size shrinker' or 'video file shrinker' into Google and you'll see a few free tools to help you optimize your content.

A few more tips: Look into converting your images and graphics into AVIF or WebP. These are highly performant and there are many platforms that connect with CMS's to do it for you automatically. Something that often goes overlooked when optimizing images is the need for certain ones at all. Ask yourself: - Is the image providing value to the page, or is it just to occupy whitespace? - Can this image be removed and replaced with a few lines of CSS (solid colored backgroundsfor example)

Optimizing website performance extends beyond basic minification and concatenation of files. It's crucial to ensure scripts and CSS are only loaded on pages where they're needed, preventing unnecessary resource loading on, for example, the homepage. Employing minified bundles further streamlines this process by compressing and combining CSS and JS files, reducing the number of server requests and load times. Adopting a utility-first CSS framework like Tailwind can simplify class management within these minified bundles, allowing for more efficient styling without the overhead of unused styles. These targeted strategies contribute significantly to a faster, more responsive website, enhancing both user experience and overall site performance.

Minification: Remove unnecessary characters, spaces, and comments to reduce file size. Compression: Compress code files using tools like Gzip to decrease load times. Asynchronous Loading: Load non-essential scripts asynchronously to prevent blocking page rendering. Caching: Implement browser caching for static resources to reduce server requests. Code Splitting: Divide large code files into smaller, more manageable components for efficient loading. Lazy Loading: Load scripts only when needed, optimizing initial page load times. Optimize Database Queries: Optimize database queries to reduce server response times for dynamic content. Regular Code Review: Conduct regular code reviews to identify and eliminate inefficiencies.

- Check your GTM! If you are working for an organization that has had multiple developers, you would be amazed at what GTM is injecting into your website that hurts performance. - Be mindful of where scripts are loaded in. Do you need a captcha script loaded in the background of pages without a form? Is live chat valuable on your blog? If not, don't include it. - Be careful in how you utilize defer or async scripts. Loading certain scripts can break their functionality or tracking. - Be careful with premade themes and certain plugins. They are often bloated with multiple fonts and icon libraries which are very resource intensive.

Having a tight hold on tag management is key. Put a procedure in place to periodically review your tags and remove those you aren't using. It is a good idea to put as part of a project plan for a tool a procedure to remove the tag at the end of the project or contract. I've had multiple occasions where I've checked ObservePoint, noticed a call, and the stakeholder knows nothing about that particular tool, or that they stopped using it years ago.

Caching everything through cloudflare that you can. Global caching will load your assets from a geo location closer to the user. Its a massive win and cloudflare is free.

- When looking at CDN providers, compare how many POP points they have in relation to where most of your users are located. You want your CDN to be as close as possible to your users. - Evaluate modern technologies such as headless CMSs and hosting platforms. These often result in much better performance but can be more challenging for less technical teams to maintain. - Don't automatically blame your hosting for performance issues. Moving to the fastest hosting provider won't help underlying issues you still need to address. - Look into specialized providers. For example, if you are using WordPress there are providers that optimize their entire tech stack for your CMS. Do your due diligence as some say this but don't actually do it.

Tip: You do not overcompensate for regular or "automated" testing. If you have a low-traffic website, manually test via LightHouse a few times a week. For example, if you are not running a tool like HotJar on your website, do not add it to test performance because it's just adding another script to slow your website down.

Use nifty tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, and WebPageTest, not just once, but regularly. Give your site a regular health check. And hey, don't stop there. Then bring in the big guns like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Hotjar. They'll help you track everything from traffic to user behavior, conversions, and even those pesky errors. Regular monitoring and testing mean you're always on top of your game, keeping your site fast and your visitors happy. In the digital world, performance is king, and staying vigilant is the key to ruling the kingdom.

Use tools like GTmetrix and Google Pagespeed Insights to see how your page performs on a technical level, but don't forget that there are other factors that contribute to the perception of page speed beyond the nuts and bolts of loading time. Sample customers to get an idea of if they perceived the site to load quickly. The order images appear in, the way the site renders, and the layout of a page can all impact the perceived speed of your site. Remember, perception is reality. I've seen sites that have incredible Pagespeed Insights scores, but feel like they load at the speed of molasses. Conversely, I've seen sites that have sub-50 score rankings that feel snappy!

When you run A/B tests on your site, there is always a risk that it will impact your site speed (especially if it's client-side testing). This is a poor excuse to not test - you should still be running A/B tests on your site. However, it's worth knowing that there may be tradeoffs when you run SUPER code-heavy client side testing, so optimizing the execution of that code, or alternating the solution but still testing the problem statement, is worthwhile.

Keeping your website simple is an easy way to ensure fast loading and good UX. The more pages, photos, and features you add, the longer it takes to load and the more you have to optimize and maintain. Only publish what you absolutely have to have: no more, no less. Everything else is a distraction.