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How to Improve Your Website Speed to Boost Sales & Conversions

Your customers want your site to load faster, if your website speed disappoints them, they may leave your site without converting and also it hurts your site SEO. According to data, a page load delay of just one second costs Amazon $1.6 billion in sales every year. This shows how important your website speed is to increase sales and conversions.

The major reasons for a slow website are (1) slow server response time (2) more HTTP requests, (3) unclean and heavy code, and (4) excessive ads. After reading this content, you know how to speed up your website to increase your website conversions and decrease bounce rate.

1. Choose a fast hosting provider

The most important factor to consider when improving your site speed is choosing the right hosting solution for your website. Your hosting provider should have fast and stable servers in order to reduce server response time and increase page loading speed.

Also, your hosting plan plays a major role in determining your site speed. Instead of choosing shared hosting plans, go for advanced hosting plans like VPS or cloud hosting.

Also, choose a server that is closest to your website visitors, this can help to reduce latency and improve website loading speed. Using premium cloud hosting services like AWS and Google Cloud enhance your site speed and uptime which helps you to retain and convert more site visitors.

2. Sign up for CDN

When choosing a hosting provider, you can only deliver maximum speed to visitors who are nearest to your server location. But with CDN, your website content is stored at servers closest to your audience and delivered faster when they access your site. 

A CDN is nothing but a content delivery network where your website content is cached from your origin server and then stored at multiple servers across the globe. When people visit your website, your content is fetched and distributed from the nearest servers. This helps your audience access your content quickly and minimizes bounce rate.

3. Minimize HTTP requests

Your web page contains a lot of resources like text, images, videos, etc. When a user opens your page, an HTTP request is made between the browser and your server to fetch and show your content to the end-user.

The more files your page contains, the more requests it will take to display your content and this leads to more loading time. But you can reduce this loading time significantly by reducing the number of HTTP requests. To achieve this, use website speed test tools like Google Page speed insights or Pingdom to find the causes for more HTTP requests.

4. Compress Image Files

When uploading images to your files, compress them to reduce the overall page size as increased page size leads to increased loading time. If you're running a WordPress site, then you can use a plugin like Smush to automatically compress and reduce the size of your image. Reducing image size boosts your site speed significantly.

5. Use a lightweight theme

Choosing the right theme is essential to improve your website performance and engagement. When installing a theme, pick a lightweight and cleanly coded theme to improve your page loading and server response time.

6. Uninstall inactive plugins

Plugins are great for extending your website functionality but running more plugins hurt your site speed. If you're running a wordpress site, uninstall plugins that you don't use or need, as this helps to enhance your page speed.

7. Compress your website files with Gzip

With Gzip compression, you can compress HTML, CSS, and other scripts of your page and this decreases your overall page size and improves your Page speed.

To enable Gzip compression, you can use a WordPress plugin like W3 Total Cache or you can also enable it through your hosting provider. But make sure, whether Gzip compression is enabled for your site by using online Gzip compression test or page speed test tools.

8. Use Caching plugin

Page caching plugins cache and store your pages and display them to your visitors when needed. With a caching plugin, you can reduce the server's work to process and load your site pages as it involves more steps.

Doing this makes your site faster and improves your website performance. You can use WordPress plugins like WP Rocket and WP fastest cache or you can also enable the cache option on your hosting provider dashboard if available.

9. Update your CMS & Plugins regularly

Updating all your website assets like CMS, plugins, and PHP will not only keep your site secure but also increase your website performance and speed. Using managed hosting providers like Kinsta and WPengine will automatically update your WordPress site and plugins and saves you more time.

Are you looking to increase your sales and customer base online? Then hire us to do digital marketing for your business that yields higher profits and revenue in a short time.