Improving website performance with Page Speed

Since Google’s recent announcement that web page load times are now a ranking factor web designers and developers have been required to pay additional attention to site performance considerations. Here are just a handful of factors that todays web developers need to keep in mind.

Most of todays web pages are made up of a collection of components including CSS files, javascript, images and often movies. Minimising the number of elements and therefore the number of HTTP requests necessary to render a page is crucial for fast page load times.

Around 80% of the end user’s response time is consumed in waiting for all of the page elements to download. It is well known that this waiting time can prompt visitors to leave an ecommerce site and visit a faster loading competitor. This time can be reduced by using a content delivery network to serve up the static content, such as javascript and css files. A content delivery network is basically a collection of servers setup in various geographic locations to efficiently deliver content to users.

As web designs become increasing complex, richer and more engaging to the end user they need an ever increasing number of components in order to render, such as Flash and javascript. When a site is first visited a number of HTTP requests will be made to download all of these elements. These can be minimised on subsequent visits by caching and this can be controlled using the Expires header. This header is commonly used for images but it should be routinely employed for all elements including Flash and javascript files.

Compression is another technique that every web developer should be using. GZIP is one of the most popular compression tools, supported by most browsers, it can reduce the size of many elements by as much as 70%.

There are lots of additional techniques that are both good for search engine optimisation of web pages but will enhance the users experience. These include putting stylesheets at the top of pages and scripts at the bottom; minifying both javascript and CSS files; putting javascript and CSS into external files; reducing the number of DNS lookups and avoiding redirects. Good luck.

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As a webmaster, what does this mean for you? It means that you have to optimize your site and remove any irrelevant information or graphics. Is there any content that you put on to a separate page; you could then put a link to that page. Are there any images that aren’t necessary? It is often better to provide information in plain text, rather than by using a picture.

There are also some other methods that you can use to make your web site download faster. If you will be keeping graphics on your site, such as your logo, consider reducing their quality. Programs such as Photoshop allow you to select the quality of JPEG images; consider making the image a lower quality image, which will reduce the file size. Alternatively, try changing your image from a JPEG to a GIF (or vice versa). The JPEG and GIF formats were designed for particular types for images, and you are likely to find that one will be smaller than the other.

If you have Javascript on your site, you may find that it is not necessary to have it there. If you have Javascript that validates information in a form, consider doing the validation after the form has been submitted.

A content delivery network (CDN) will help speed up the delivery of your site. A CDN has servers located at various points around the world. When a visitor requests information from your site, they will be able to download it from the closet server. As a result, the amount of time taken to transfer it to the user’s computer will be small.

If you will be keeping some, or all, of your website on one server, ensure that the server compresses the file before transferring it to the user. Most modern browsers are capable of receiving compressed files and displaying them as normal. Compression is particularly effective on HTML and CSS files, where a small number of tags are used repetitively. If you run Apache on your own server, consider using the mod_deflate module to compress your files. If you are searching for a web hosting provider, select one that has the mod_deflate module installed; you may need to contact their helpdesk to see if they have this module.

You can prevent a user’s browser from downloading files unnecessarily by adding an Expires: header to your files. If your site has any static pages or images that are unlikely to change in the near future, an Expires: header will tell the browser how long it can keep the file for. The browser will then keep a copy of the file in its cache, and will not download the file again until the date specified in the Expires: header. You can easily add an Expires: header if you have Apache installed on your own server, and you have the mod_expires module installed.

If you follow several of these steps, you will reduce the amount of time it takes to download your site. This will help increase your rankings in the search engines.

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