Speed is one of the most important elements of any website: slow websites lead to higher bounce rates and decreased conversions, and as more and more transactions are performed through websites and mobile applications, users expect fast load times and a seamless browsing experience. But website speed is often overlooked because it may involve several teams (marketing, web development, and back-end tech support), or is passed over for more obvious website revamps such as design.
Website speed and user experience
The reality is, website speed is a crucial aspect of user experience, and it should be treated as such. Maintaining an average or above-average website speed is an ongoing task. Although some of the most effective ways to improve website speed involve setting up solutions which require some technical knowledge, there are also smaller improvements that anyone with a basic understanding of how to edit their website can implement immediately.
First, websites must perform a basic analysis of their current web speed. A synthetic test such as WebPageTest.org can be performed and read by anyone, and you can also perform speed tests for the websites of competitors to get an idea of where you stand compared to others in the same industry. Using the outcome of your speed test as a baseline, there are then several steps websites can take to improve their performance.
Free tips to improve page speed
In this free guide, Section provides the top tips used by leading websites to improve their page speed. These tips are ranked by difficulty, cost, and speed improvement. We’ve included a variety of website performance improvements ranging in technical difficulty and cost, so there’s something for everyone, whether or not you have the technical ability or money to invest in some of the larger speed enhancements we suggest.
Before you embark on your speed-improvement mission, we suggest you also take stock of current marketing metrics such as bounce rate, conversion rate, and pages viewed. Once your website speed has improved, expect to see these go up!
Download Section’s Tips To Improve Website Speed here.
