Have you ever opened a website and waited patiently for it to load? Of course not. We live in a world where everyone wants things fast. Why do we switch to the latest iPhone? Or aim to buy a new laptop with better features and specifications? 

All because we want things to be quicker with enhanced user experience. A recent study has revealed that more than half of the people on the web want a website to load within 2 seconds and in case if the buffering continues, users would refresh or switch to another site. This is something website owners should take a note on, since it will cost them a significant amount of audience.

If you think speed is not an essential consideration for your online presence and digital strategy, you are heavily mistaken. Gone are the days where users would spend a decent amount of time connecting their PCs with wires for DSL and wait for websites to load. We are living in 2020, the era of IoT, where almost every household device is connected with an application/website and therefore the loading speed matters. Searching something on the PC is also old era, now you can navigate it anything on your phone within seconds.

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Moreover, site speed has an impact on the bounce rate, several conversations, traffic, etc. of a particular website. Therefore, the significance of site speed cannot be ignored. 

Here are more reasons why website owners need to ponder the importance of site speed.
Enhances User Experience

This goes without saying!
Most of us open multiple websites and switch from one tab to another for what we are looking for. The site that will buffer the fastest will hold our attention, and we will automatically close the other tabs.

Good site speed is an indication of a quality user experience. On the other hand, particularly for an e-commerce website that takes million hours to load all its content will create a negative impression, discouraging users from staying on it for long or revisiting it.

If your website buffers entirely within 3 seconds, you are on the right path. If you fall under the category of websites that take more than 3 seconds, you need to stop and ponder over what could be done to increase site speed. Users do not wish to stay on the website anytime longer than 5 seconds which is why if you want to uplift your traffic and optimize SEO, you need to make sure the site speed is good enough.

Influence on Social Ads
Social Ads are favoured on websites with better user experience as highlighted by Google and Facebook. Having a fast site speed will make you capable and fall worthy of better ads. Getting better ads will help you gain decent money, which something you should keep in the account.

Website to work on mobile as good as it does on PC

People who are always on the use of mobile internet and expect the website to work on their PC as good as it does on their PC. Therefore, website owners need to focus on this factor to get maximum users. A survey revealed that users found the site to buffer slower than it did on their PC, which discouraged them from browsing it later. This was confirmed by more than 30% of the users.

Tips on increasing your site speed
There are several ways in which you can check and increase your site speed. Other than restricting your content, such as HD images, because there is still a lot that can be done to ace this factor.

Controlling HTTP
HTTP requests are made just as the website receives a picture or file from the browser. These requests account for 80% of the load time, which can take a lot of time to load. A website that makes more HTTP requests will take a longer time to load than the one with fewer applications.

To decrease HTTP requests, restricting page content is not the only option. One tactic is by combining the JS and CSS files rather than depending on the browser to obtain several records. You can compress or merge all the data in one file so that the dependence on the browser is reduced.

Make your page responsive to users so that additional content is only loading as per requested. Having conditional statements will help leave you the trouble of loading images and tabs that are not needed at that particular time.

GZIP compression tools
If you have been advised not to upload high-quality images, for instance, fortunately, you don’t have to due to the availability of GZIP compression tools. These are pretty handy as they make sure owners do not have to restrict the number and size of images they upload. These tools allow users to compress their models up to 70% without damaging the quality. Hence, no need to sacrifice the quality of graphics just so your page could load faster.

Using caches
Caches versions can be used in case your website has a lot of traffic, and it is taking time to load. By updating the caches of your site regularly, your website will be able to work just fine. Common considerations include CDN and MAXCDN that promote better performance.

Choose SSD Webspace
In this modern era of solid state drives, you can also go for an SSD web host rather than relying on traditional mechanical drives storage that works way slower compared to SSDs. Tests show that hard drives operate almost 20x slower compared to solid state drives, which means you can enhance your website performance by storing your site data on SSD hosting.
 
SSD drive writes and reads data blazingly fast and fetch website content in a matter of a few seconds. On top of that, these devices provide a long life as well resulting in high reliability. For your ease, some hosts such as Dreamhost, Hostinger, Siteground, and Fastcomet provide top class SSD hosting plans. According to a review about fastest web hosts on AlterWebHost, all of these companies deliver ultimate uptime as well as fast web hosting services around the world because of solid state drives and multiple global data centers.

Saving CSS as external files
Stylesheets loading up as soon as a visitor clicks on your site is an essential factor that is responsible for slowing down your page. You can handle this concern by saving scripts and CSS as external files, which makes sure the additional content only starts loading once the main page is complete.

Verdict
We live in a world where everyone is possibly carrying out multiple tasks simultaneously. Hence, a website that is taking a lot of time to load is frowned upon. There are several ways in which you can increase the site speed. Optimizing assets, restricting HTTP requests, merging files, managing caches etc. are some of the major areas which can be reflected upon to improve the overall performance of your page.