What Should We Consider to Improve Website Speed?

Core Web Vitals essentials: image compression, server caching, and critical rendering path optimization.

Speakers: Okan Çakır

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Okan ÇakırinZeo Answers

24 Aug 2017

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⏱ 3 min read• 491 words

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We can group the factors that slow a site down into 4 main buckets. The first one is probably the easiest to act on. Your image files aren't optimized. So compress and resize your images before you upload them. That shrinks the file sizes. Smaller files load faster. You should also upload images in the right format. Use SVG for geometric shapes. Use JPEG for photos and screenshots. Use PNG for high-quality images and transparent elements. Try to keep the number of images to a minimum. Use CSS or drop the images you don't need. That cuts down your data transfer size. Make sure your images are responsive. That way they render properly on every device and screen size.

Unoptimized source files hurt site speed too, not just images. To avoid that, keep your CSS and JavaScript in the same file. Then lean on browser caching. Those files will load a lot faster. Comments and blank lines make life easier on the front end. But skip those extra lines in your CSS and JavaScript. Minify your source files as much as you can. It helps browsers parse the code faster. Put your JavaScript right before the closing body tag. Don't stick it up top in the HTML. That way page content starts loading first. The resource files get triggered after. You can also use the async attribute. It defers loading instead of pulling everything on first load.

Slow data transfer speed also hurts site performance. To improve this, lean on the browser's caching. That's the cache feature. For a set period, returning visitors get images and resource files straight from cache. Pages load faster that way. You can serve your files with HTTP compression. Do it in Gzip format. This shrinks your data sizes. You get faster transfers. There's also a server system called Content Delivery Network. Use it to load your page resources from different servers. With this system, physical distance between user and server won't slow you down. Resources load from the nearest server. The last main issue I'll cover is too many HTTP requests. Avoid unnecessary redirects. Skip redirect chains too. They create HTTP requests you don't need.

You should also remove pages returning a 404 code from your internal links. Got resource files with a 404 status code? Try fixing them. If they're unusable, pull them from your source code. That cuts down your HTTP request count. Don't use tons of separate CSS and JavaScript files. Bundle your resources into a single file when you can. That cuts down the HTTP requests fired off during page load. Better site performance is the payoff. Use the CSS sprite method for repeating icons, logos, and static files. It works across every page on your site. That way you avoid a separate HTTP request per image. Fix these things and your performance improves. Google treats site speed as a ranking metric. So you get better visibility in their eyes too.

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Okan Çakır

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