Website Speed Optimization

Full Training for Local Service Businesses

Approximate time to implement (for beginners): 1-7 days

Note 1: To get the point across easier, I will use a fictitious business called ''ABC Company'' when showing examples.

Note 2: These tips can apply to any service business, large or small or in any industry (construction, beauty, restaurant, finance, etc)

Faster website loading, more revenue

Faster website = higher conversions rate, higher conversion rate = more revenue

Improving the speed as which a site loads is one of the major factors that affects your customers experience and conversion rate on website. It has a trickle down effect on every other aspects of your website, as well as your rankings on search engines (Google, Bing)

What is Website Speed Optimization?

It refers to optimizing the loading speed of a website. How fast does it appear to users, how fast can a user interact with the website.

How can this Benefit a Service Business?

As you will see in this document, site speed is a large factor in whether or not someone stays or leave your website. Having better site speed means a better experience for customers, which in turn, increase their likelihood of contacting/purchasing from you on your website.

Improving it can do the following for your business:

• Improves conversion rates on website

• Reduces bounce rate on website

• Improve search engine rankings (Google and Bing)

Above is a graph showing the advantage of having a fast loading website. Going from a 3 second loading site to an under 1 second loading site can have impacts as big as increasing conversion rates by 3x (which can then multiply revenue 3x)

Here's an example to show what can be possible with a 50% faster website (From 3 second to 2 second load time)

Improving the speed of a website by 50% is not atypical if you optimize every aspect of it. In some cases, under optimized businesses have been able to increase their site speed by over 5 seconds, improving their conversion rates as much as 5x!

This document will share exactly how you can do that for your own service business, or other people's businesses (if you are an agency owner)

Part 1: Introduction to Site Speed Optimization

What is Site Speed Optimization

Site speed optimization is the process of improving the time it takes for your website to load. This involves various techniques and strategies to ensure that web pages load quickly and efficiently, providing a better user experience. A faster site can lead to higher user engagement, reduced bounce rates, and improved search engine rankings.

Why Should you Optimize Site Speed

1. Improves User Experience: Fast-loading websites provide a better user experience, keeping visitors engaged and reducing bounce rates.

2. Boosts Search Engine Rankings: Search engines like Google consider site speed as a ranking factor. Faster sites are more likely to rank higher in search results.

3. Increases Conversion Rates: A quicker load time can lead to higher conversion rates, as users are less likely to abandon a fast-loading site.

4. Enhances Mobile Performance: Mobile users often have slower internet connections. Optimizing site speed ensures that your site performs well on mobile devices.

In short, optimizing your site's speed can enhance user satisfaction, improve search engine rankings, and increase conversions, making it an essential aspect of your websites performance.

Part 1.2: Types of Optimizations

Site speed optimization makes your website load faster by compressing images and videos, cleaning up code, using a CDN, enabling browser caching, implementing lazy loading and even optimizing fonts

Types of Speed Optimizations

Brief summary of how to reduce site loading speed.

Image and Video Optimization

What is it:

Making images and videos smaller and more efficient to load.

Why is it important:

Smaller file sizes and efficient formats ensure faster load times, improving user experience and site speed.

Backend Optimization

What is it:

Cleaning up code, reducing unnecessary steps, using nearby servers (CDNs), and storing data in browsers.

Why is it important:

These steps streamline the website's background processes, making it faster and more efficient for users and Google to crawl.

Front End Optimization

What is it:

Implementing lazy loading, optimizing fonts, and prioritizing important site elements.

Why is it important:

These techniques speed up the initial loading time and ensure users quickly see the most important content.

Considerations that apply to all aspects of speed optimizations:

• Across Site: Make sure these strategies are implemented across your website, allowing a constant experience for users and proper rankings for all your pages.

• Mobile Optimization: Ensure all optimizations benefit both desktop and mobile users, as a significant portion of web traffic comes from mobile devices.

• Regular Testing and Monitoring: Continuously test site speed with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and monitor performance to identify and address issues promptly.

Part 2: Image and Video Optimization

Here are a few strategies to optimize your images and videos to achieve faster load speed across your website.

Image and Video Optimization

What Are Image and Video Optimizations? Image and video optimization means making your pictures and videos smaller and using better formats to help your website load faster. This way, your site still looks great but loads quickly, giving users a better experience.

Why is Image and Video Optimization Important?

1. Improves Site Speed: Smaller file sizes lead to faster load times, which enhances user experience by reducing the time visitors spend waiting for pages to load.

2. Enhances Mobile Performance: Optimized images and videos are especially important for mobile users who often have slower internet connections. Using appropriately sized images for mobile screens ensures quick loading and better performance.

3. Boosts SEO: Faster websites are favored by search engines like Google. Optimizing images and videos can improve your search engine rankings, making your site more visible to potential visitors.

Best Practices for Optimizing Images and Videos

To maximize the benefits of image and video optimization, follow these best practices:

1. Use Compressor Tools: Reduce the file size of images without compromising quality by using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim. This helps your site load faster and improves overall performance.

2. Minimize Pixel Size: Rule of thumb is 72 pixels per (real life viewable) inch to maintain high resolution without slowing down your site. This ensures that images look good while loading quickly. For highly visual industries like photography or architecture, you might want to use higher resolution images.

3. Choose Efficient Formats: Format images in WebP instead of traditional formats like PNG, JPG, or JPEG. WebP provides better compression and quality, which speeds up load times. Can use a tool like CloudConvert to modify.

4. Optimize for Different Devices: Rule of thumb is to use 1000px images for desktop and 400px images for mobile. Image quality will appear the same to user but site speed on mobile will dramatically improve.

5. Embed Videos Externally: Use iframing to embed videos hosted on external platforms like YouTube or Vimeo instead of hosting them directly on website. Keeps the users experience almost identical, while improving site speed in most cases.

Part 3: How to Optimize your Sites Backend for Speed

Here are a few strategies to optimize the backend of your website

Backend Site Speed Optimization

What is Backend Optimization? Backend optimization involves improving the behind-the-scenes elements of your website to enhance its speed and performance. Cleaning up code, compressing code, CDN's and more.

Why is Backend Optimization Important?

• Improves Site Speed: Cleaning up code and reducing unnecessary steps make your site faster, enhancing the user experience by decreasing load times.

• Boosts SEO: Search engines favor faster websites. Optimizing your backend can improve your search engine rankings, making your site more visible to potential visitors.

Best Practices for Backend Optimization

1. Clean Up Code: Remove unnecessary bits of code to make files lighter and quicker to access. This helps streamline operations and improves load times. Can use basic tools for small code like HTMLCleaner.

2. Reduce Redirects: Identify and fix unnecessary steps that slow down visitors. Reducing redirects helps users reach their desired pages more quickly. Can use a tool like RedirectChecker to verify.

3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Implementing a CDN allows users to access your site from a server that is geographically closer to them. This reduces latency and speeds up content delivery. Can use a CDN like CloudFare.

4. Enable Browser Caching: Browser caching stores certain elements of your website in users’ browsers. This helps pages load faster on subsequent visits as users don’t have to download the same content again. Look into your website hosting company for how to set it up.

5. Compress Code: Compressing code reduces the space it takes up, making it load faster. Maintain readable code for development while ensuring it’s automatically compressed when the site goes live. Although it does not have a huge effect on site speed, it is still important to consider. Can use a tool like HTMLCompressor to do so.

6. Remove Unused Code Dependencies: Eliminate unnecessary code dependencies, like unused jQuery scripts, to lighten the site’s load and improve speed. Details on how to use (link)

7. Use Caching Plugins: Utilize plugins like WP Fastest Cache to compress your website’s content. This further speeds up load times and improves overall performance. Applicable only for wordpress.

8. 
   

Part 4: How to Optimize Front End Site Speed

Here are a few strategies to optimize the front end of your website for improved site speed

Front End Site Speed Optimization

What is Front End Optimization? Frontend optimization involves improving the elements of your website that users interact with directly. This includes optimizing the delivery and rendering of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and other media to enhance the website’s speed and performance.

Why is Frontend Optimization Important? 

1. Improves Site Speed: Optimizing frontend elements reduces load times, enhancing the user experience by making your website faster and more responsive.

2. Enhances User Experience: A well-optimized frontend ensures smooth interactions and quick access to content, leading to higher satisfaction and engagement from users.

3. Boosts SEO: Search engines prefer faster websites. Optimizing your frontend can improve your search engine rankings, making your site more visible to potential visitors.

Best Practices for Frontend Optimization:

To maximize the benefits of frontend optimization, follow these best practices:

• Implement Lazy Loading: Lazy loading delays the loading of images and videos until they are about to be seen by the user. This speeds up the initial load time and saves bandwidth. Here is an in depth guide on how to set up lazy loading (link)

  • Example: When someone visits your site, the main image and header will load first, and by the time they look at the image and read the title, the rest of the site will have loaded. Allowing the user to feel like the whole site loaded in one go even if it did not.

• Optimize Fonts: Use efficient font formats like WOFF2 and minimize the number of fonts used. Ensure that fonts are loaded in a way that doesn’t block the rendering of your page. Guide on how to download font from Google (link), and link to Google fonts.

• Use Preload Links: Preload links are a way to instruct the browser to load certain resources (such as fonts, stylesheets, or scripts) early in the page load process. By using preload links, you can prioritize the loading of critical resources, ensuring they are available as soon as they are needed. Although, you need to be careful on not overwhelm the site with too many preload links as it may cause the site to slow down. Here is an depth guide (link).

  • Example: When a user is hovering a link on your website for 100ms, a preload for that link will begin. Allowing the user to get a quicker loading page when they decide to click on the link.

How to track site speed of your website, to then test and improve it

The most commonly used tool is Google's webmaster tool. With this tool you will be able, in real time, to know how every page of your website is performing, which will then help in figuring out which pages need to be improved. You can also use a free tool called WebPageTest  for a different look on your sites performance.

Conclusion - Website Speed Optimization

If you’d like to learn more about optimizing your business online, we offer 12 free trainings on subjects ranging from SEO, Website Optimization and even Sales. 

Click the link below 👇

https://vizonsdigital.gumroad.com/l/12Trainings

If you are looking to outsource the work and get us to optimize these parts of your business, visit our site for more information, and book a discovery call with our team. 

Click the link below 👇

www.vizionsdigital.com