How to Improve Site Speed: A Complete Guide

Welcome to the complete guide on how to improve site speed.

In this post, you'll learn the significance of website performance, understand the real factors behind loading speed, and draw up an optimization plan to supercharge the user experience.

Let's get started.

What is Website Performance & Why Does it Matter?

Website performance can be interpreted in two ways: website speed or its effectiveness in relation to business goals, like attracting organic traffic and generating conversions. 

On the speed side, we're looking at performance metrics like loading time, responsiveness, and stability. For business goals, you need to focus on datasets like conversion rate, keyword rankings, user engagement, and a handful of revenue metrics. 

It's worth noting that a website's effectiveness in achieving business goals depends on website speed as well. After all, if you want your visitors to convert into paying customers, you don't provide them with a satisfying and compelling user experience — not irritate them with a slow, unresponsive website. 

There are plenty of studies that confirm the impact of website performance on revenue metrics like conversion rate. 

In one case study involving beauty brand Glamnetic, improving site speed resulted in a whopping 120% increase in conversions. Another study conducted by Deloitte revealed that improving loading speed by 0.1 seconds resulted in an 8.4% increase in conversions for retail brands. 

That's why, when talking about website performance, it's more closely associated with user experience factors (e.g., loading speed and responsiveness) than business objectives.

Factors Impacting Website Speed

There are several factors that affect website speed. 

Here are some of them:  

• Website size: When it comes to size, it's important to look at the number of pages as well as their file sizes. The bigger the page, the more resources are needed to deliver them to users. 
• Media files and scripts: Speaking of file sizes, certain assets like scripts and images can easily bloat the size of your pages. Without proper optimization, these assets can have a profound impact on your website's initial loading time and hurt the user experience. 
• Third-party resources: Requiring browsers to download additional resources like third-party scripts, web fonts, and stylesheets can extend the time it takes to load your website. Similar to media assets, these resources can bog down your website's performance if left unchecked. 
• Caching: Both browser and server caching can reduce network latency, improve responsiveness, and boost site speed when implemented well. Browser caching is when static website files are stored locally to make them readily available for future visits, whereas server caching stores data in an intermediary caching server — benefiting website performance for multiple users. 
• Internet connection: As website owners, you can't ignore your audience's network quality when thinking about performance. While outside your direct control, there are a few optimization practices that can improve the experience of users with bad connections. 
• Web hosting solution: Your choice of web hosting service can lead to issues like network latency, bandwidth throttling, and downtimes. Specific factors like server type, hardware specifications, and even physical location can also lead to poor website performance. 

Keep in mind that there are just some and not all of the factors that can affect website speed. To truly uncover what's slowing your website down, you'll need a tool like PageSpeed Insights for a quick analysis (more on this later).

How to Improve Website Speed

Looking at PageSpeed Insights's recommendations will give you an idea of the work ahead. In most cases, the optimization process entails the following steps:

Enhancing Server Performance

Let's start with the things that are guaranteed to improve your website's speed (if you haven't implemented them yet).

Upgrade Hosting Plan

If you're still running on a shared hosting plan, consider upgrading as soon as your traffic picks up in volume.

Don't wait for visitors to report their bad experiences on your website. Remember, each new visitor is a potential customer — and their first impression of your website could be their last. 

In terms of web hosting, most website owners have three upgrade choices: 

• Dedicated hosting: Unlike a shared hosting environment, your website's performance will be unhindered by the resource demands of other websites. You also get full control over the server's configuration, security, and customization.
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting: A VPS hosting plan guarantees you have dedicated resources within a shared server — without the price tag of an actual dedicated hosting plan. This is a great compromise for website owners who require reliable performance on a modest budget.
• Managed hosting: Some providers offer managed hosting services to ensure consistent performance tailored to your specific website platform (e.g., Webflow, WordPress, and Magento). A managed hosting service will help you achieve consistent performance without worrying about technical tasks like setup, maintenance, compliance, and security.

Don't forget to choose a reputable web hosting provider when upgrading. If a hosting company's main value proposition is affordability, their plans might be cheap for a reason — and you probably won't like it.

Instead, take a look at some of the highest-rated web hosting companies for individuals and enterprises:

• BlueHost
• InMotion Hosting
• A2 Hosting
• SiteGround
• DreamHost

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network or CDN is a collection of servers distributed across strategic locations worldwide. Whenever a user requests to load a page, the nearest proxy server takes charge of delivering the content — sidestepping the problem of network latency due to physical distance. 

It's also fairly common for CDNs to include additional features, like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) prevention and real-time monitoring. That's why you need to do research and diligently compare CDN providers like Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, and Azure CDN.  

Reduce Page Size

The smaller the page, the less a server has to work to load it. This, of course, can lead to noticeable improvements on website speed. 

Compress Images

While large and high-resolution images help create a more captivating user experience, they can bottleneck website performance if inserted carelessly into a webpage. 

Fortunately, you can easily nullify their impact on performance using two strategies: converting them into next-gen formats or using an image optimization tool. 

Next-gen formats for web images, namely WebP and AVIF, substantially reduce the file size of images while preserving clarity. You can use tools like CloudConvert or TinyIMG to easily convert your images into WebP or AVIF. 

Alternatively, use image optimization tools like ImageOptim to compress your image's file size and remove unnecessary metadata — without visibly degrading image quality. 

To optimize images further, consider implementing "resolution switching." 

This tactic prompts browsers to load a specific version of an image that matches the user's display. For example, if the user is browsing from a smartphone, your website can switch to a smaller version of an image to optimize bandwidth usage. 

You can implement resolution switching using the 'srcset' and 'sizes' HTML attributes.

Minify CSS and JavaScript

Code minification is also another performance optimization technique that every website owner needs to learn.

The aim is to "shrink" the file size of scripts and stylesheets by removing unnecessary whitespace and developer comments. This enables browsers to download and execute code faster.

Since a single JavaScript file can contain tens of thousands of lines, the only practical way to minify code is through automated tools or plugins. UglifyJS and CSSNano come to mind as two of the best code minification tools on the web. 

For automated plugins, try something like WP-Optimize for WordPress to make your job infinitely easier.  

Implement Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a directive that tells browsers to prioritize loading page elements above the fold (the top half of a page that's immediately visible to users). The rest of the page, in turn, will be loaded once they come into the viewport. 

This technique can be implemented natively in HTML. Just add the following attribute to the low-priority assets and test. 

A more convenient way to implement lazy loading is with the help of third-party plugins or extensions. For example, to easily lazy load elements on your WordPress website, just install the Lazy Loader plugin and you're almost done. 

Monitor and Improve Website Speed

See to it that you're always on top of your website's Core Web Vitals metrics throughout your performance optimization efforts. 

This lets you determine if your strategies are working as intended — or if you're doing enough to deliver a high-quality experience to your audience. Moreover, tools like PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix will keep you topped off with new opportunities to improve your website's performance.

To use PageSpeed Insights, just enter your website's URL and click 'Analyze.'

PageSpeed Insights starts off with an evaluation of your website's Core Web Vitals — AKA website performance metrics that analyze loading speed, page responsiveness, and stability. 

Tracking your Core Web Vitals is essential to performance optimization. But for now, let's focus on the "Diagnostics" section where you can find all the performance-related issues detected on your website. 

You can click on any issue to reveal more insights as well as actionable recommendations. 

Which CMS offers the Best Website Performance?

Performance optimization begins as early as the selection process for your website platform or Content Management System (CMS).  

Sure, every CMS is capable of exceptional performance with the right strategies. But as far as performance optimization goes, each CMS comes with its own set of pros and cons. 

1. WordPress

As of writing, WordPress powers around 478 million websites on the internet. That's around 43.5% of all websites across every major industry. 

Performance-wise, WordPress websites can be very resource-intensive. But thanks to its popularity, there are tons of plugins and third-party services that offer seamless integration with this CMS. 

WordPress Pros: 

• Massive pool of themes and plugins that prioritize website performance
• Control every single aspect of your website through code or the visual editor
• Compatibe with nearly every performance optimization solution

WordPress Cons:

• Easily filled with bloat if you're not careful
• Needs regular updates and maintenance work
• Very dependent on the web hosting environment

2. Shopify

Shopify is one of the largest ecommerce platforms on the internet, especially in the United States. It has a few game-changing advantages over other platforms when it comes to performance optimization:

Shopify Pros: 

• Built-in web performance analysis report
• Free, built-in CDN 
• Automatic image optimization

Shopify Cons: 

• Limitations in terms of customizability and compatibility
• Can be costly in the long run (depending on the size of your website)

3. Webflow

Webflow is a pure, drag-and-drop website builder that's backed by a secure, high-performance hosting infrastructure. It can help you create a 100% unique, fully customized website without writing a single line of code.

Webflow Pros:

• Managed hosting fine-tuned to maximize performance
• Built-in CDN
• Clean and efficient code 
• Automatic updates 

Webflow Cons: 

• Limitations when it comes to using custom code
• Provides limited control over hosting and server configurations

4. Drupal

Drupal is a free, open-source CMS that can be used for developing websites and browser-based applications. It is highly scalable and can be retooled for just about any project while maintaining stable performance. 

Drupal Pros:

• Built for consistent performance even with large-scale websites
• Modules for performance optimization features like caching, code optimization, and more
• Third-party modules for external resources like Quicklink and Blazy

Drupal Cons: 

• Has a steep learning curve
• Similar resource-intensiveness to WordPress

How to Optimize WordPress Speed

Before we wrap up this guide, let's go over some of the best practices when optimizing the top platforms: WordPress and Shopify.

• Choose a lightweight theme. Go with mobile-responsive themes that are designed with the least amount of bloat. Avoid themes that come with excessive features right out of the box, like image carousels, animated backgrounds, and so on.
• Utilize caching plugins. Install plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache to instantly implement caching with minimal coding. Don't forget to check your web host for server-side caching tools.
• Avoid unnecessary plugins. While useful, plugins can dampen website performance with render-blocking resources, compatibility issues, and unexpected layout shifts. As a rule of thumb, only install plugins that are absolutely necessary to provide a complete user experience to your audience.

How to Optimize a Shopify Website

Shopify is built from the ground up for optimal site speed and responsiveness. Still, you need to observe the best practices if you don't intend to lose customers due to performance-related issues. 

To optimize Shopify for speed, use the following checklist: 

• Use the recommended image dimensions and aspect ratios for specific image types
• Avoid using excessive JavaScript
• Don't install unnecessary Shopify apps
• Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Choose a theme that already has everything you need
• Identify snippets in your theme's Liquid code that affect performance
• Hire or purchase Shopify optimization services

How Nostra AI Helps Increase Revenue by Improving Website Performance

Want to take your website's performance to the next level? 

Don't just settle for faster hosts or CDNs. With Nostra AI's Edge Delivery Engine™, you can keep your website close to 95% of the internet-connected world. 

Defeat the problem of network latency once and for all. 

Learn more about edge delivery networks by booking a demo here.