Websites have become the first line of interaction between businesses and their potential customers. And the fact of the matter is that if your moving company website design fails to perform, it directly influences your revenue. That is why it is important to not only build a quality website for your business but to also stay in the loop with ongoing trends. In this article, we are looking at some practical ways to increase website performance. And we leave it up to you to decide which ones might be of use to your business. So, keep reading to learn all you need about optimizing your website for high performance.
Five simple ways to increase website performance
The fact is that modern consumers have very harsh criteria when it comes to the performance of websites that they visit. And so, businesses that want to establish and maintain a strong online presence need to be on point. What this translates to is a dedication to optimizing your website for top performance. Slow page loading time, lack of site navigation, broken links, and 404 pages – these are just some of the common issues that lead to high bounce rates. The good news is that there are simple ways to increase your moving company website performance. Here are the top five to start from:
#1: Switch to Multi-CDN
It’s a fact that having a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help you save up to 60 percent bandwidth and reduce the number of requests from your website by half. Hosting media files via CDN is definitely one of the ways to increase website performance. However, even better than opting for a single CDN, you have the option to upgrade to a multi-CDN system.
As effective as they are, single-CDN setups still have certain limitations. And instead of risking business disruption in cases where a CDN will experience an outage, you can have a backup in place. By having a multi-CDN, you have multiple CDNs from different providers at your disposal, leaving more room for achieving a higher level of website performance without risks.
#2: Reduce the number of HTTP requests
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests are created whenever browsers fetch files, pages, or images from web servers. The reason why HTTP requests are so important is that they make up as much as 80% of the loading time for a webpage. Simultaneous connections per domain are limited and range between four and eight. Any more assets than that would require allowing multiple HTTP requests, which would slow down page loading time. And so, one of the simpler ways to increase website performance is by taking the steps necessary to lower the total of HTTP requests:
- Combine CSS and JavaScript (JS) files. Multiple smaller files take less time to load than one larger file.
- Limit the number of elements that need to load. This is especially important for improving your website performance on mobile devices.
- Use fewer images. Everybody loves a visually appealing website rich with images, infographics, web design elements, etc. But more often than not, less is more. And reducing the number of images on certain pages can lead to faster loading speed.
3. Compress images and optimize files
On average, image files take up nearly 60 percent of bytes loaded per page. They take up more than scripts, CSS files, videos, etc. And so, they play a big part in how fast your page loads and how your website performs. That’s why, in addition to reducing the use of images on your website, it is also essential to format the images that you use. HQ images take up a lot of space and take a lot more time and juice to load than your regular images. That is why you can either choose to use fewer images or format the ones you have to reduce their overall size.
- The rule of thumb would be to keep your images smaller than 1920px in width, and a format that is below 150KB.
4. Cache as much as possible
By caching pages, you are storing them locally and saving bandwidth when visitors pull them up. That way, you are speeding up the page loading speed and the overall performance of your website. And if you make any changes or updates to those pages without caching, the visitors will see them as they were when you cached them. That’s why it is necessary to perform caching whenever you make new modifications to your website. It all leads to a much better user experience from the very start of the session.
5. Clean up your website code
If you truly want to increase website performance, you need to look at your code as you do the content on your website. It is important for it to be clutter-free and to the point. You want to simplify it while giving it that strong punch. And that is where regular website audits for your website come in handy.
When it comes to cleansing your code and optimizing it, there are a number of tactics that you can undertake. However, we will point out the three most basic ones here:
- Database queries optimization. When you have irrelevant SQL queries, you end up wasting your production database resources. Instead, make sure to avoid slowing site performance by writing thoughtful SQL queries.
- Design pattern templates. Rather than wasting time and effort on coding each page from scratch, introduce consistency through reusable coding structures. With design pattern templates, you can create a high-end, easily readable code that will help you establish a solid foundation for your web pages, improving your website performance in the process.
- Maintain responsiveness. As the vast majority of consumers are switching over to mobile browsing, website value has become dependent on responsive web design and SEO. Therefore, coding with a mobile-first mindset definitely makes a difference when it comes to securing a strong performance for your business online. And this brings you value from both consumers as well as search engines.
Start upgrading your website today
As digital marketing specialists with years of experience, Movers Development understands better than most just how big a role your website plays. That is why we have developed a tailored approach to building high-performance websites for moving companies looking to become industry leaders.
- Contact our team today to schedule a consultation and learn more about how to increase website performance and generate more moving leads.
