Website speed refers to how fast a site responds to requests from the Web. As I am about to highlight in this article, the speed with which a website load is very critical to both the users and owners.
Users often get frustrated whenever we are unable to open a web page. Sites that take longer to load put off users, and they hardly get much viewership. Studies show that 40% of Internet users do not wait for a site to load more than three seconds.
In such a case, the site losses traffic to competition. Slow pages also give a bad image to brands as users associate site speed with its quality and services.
Since 2010, Google has been using site speed in their algorithm for ranking web pages. Website speed remains an important factor for Web page design whenever we are working on Search engine optimization.
Mobile-friendly pages are essential as more than half of Internet users are on the mobile internet. When working on a website, always think mobile as compared to desktop. The good news is that most optimization practices apply equally to both mobile and desktop Internet.
9 Ways to Speed Up Mobile Website
Here are a few simple tips to help make your site mobile fast.
Fast Web Hosting
Web search involves browsing through remote web pages in servers. The speed of the remote computer determines the ease with which a webpage requested is accessed.
For this reason, the choice of hosting service provider is significant. There are plenty of great choices when it comes to high-speed, secure and affordable web hosting.
What makes it so great is that even with little experience in web designs, the team provides the best quality SEO results.
For a server to display a single page, it executes thousands of interrelated codes that take time to load. Slow web hosting servers are at a disadvantage as search engines give priority to the fastest pages.
Responsive Web Design (RWD)
With the announcement of Mobilegeddon in 2015, Google started boosting mobile-friendly sites. The Mobilegeddon is Google’s updated search engine algorithm.
The application of a responsive design means that the site dynamically changes depending on how it is accessed (through desktop or mobile). The users accessing the site, in this case, view it differently on either device.
Google recommends dynamic designs over mobile-only as they load faster. The responsive designs also offer a huge SEO advantage. With this design, we are more likely to enjoy a wider social share generated traffic.
To achieve this, you should consider the performance, design, and content to ensure satisfaction in usability. The sites adapt layout using CSS3media queries, flexible images, proportion-based grids, and fluid grids.
Fluid Grid
The fluid grid concept calls for the use of relative units in image sizing, such as percentages, discouraging the use of absolute measures such as pixels.
Flexible Images
Size flexible images in relative units to avoid over-spilling of images outside their containing element.
CSS3 Media Queries
The use of media queries allows for the use of different CSS style rules, which are linked to the characteristics of the device used to access the site (For instance, the width of the physical display).
The responsive design aims at automated adjustment on different screen sizes, be it a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop.
Weight of the Site
As you strive to make your sites captivating to the eye, we should see that the site isn’t too weighty, lowering the loading speed. The more we add to a site, the higher the codes involved, and the professional term for such is code bloat. The most likely cause is when a designer is overly focused on the appearance of the site.
To reduce the weight of a site, we apply the following strategies.
We should always keep the site simple to reduce the number of codes used. As we saw earlier, the codes on a site affect the loading speed. A mobile screen can easily get overcrowded.
To achieve a simpler design, I recommend using a single call to action per page and eye-catching simpler designs. In keeping your site simple, we also recommend simple and shorter steps for users. It does not only make the site lighter but also offers a more friendly user experience.
I advise for the use of fewer photos and images and less color. Good quality images on a site are a plus.
However, the more images you include, the weightier the site becomes. Ideally, images make up for 63%of the weight of a page. While cutting down on the images, we also reduce the file size by compressing the images. When we compress an image, it becomes smaller with a little compromise on the quality.
To reduce the weight of a site, avoid the use of custom fonts, which are weighty in terms of codes. Custom codes employ lots of CSS and Javascript. I advise for the absolute minimization of custom codes to necessary instances.
Minimum Code
We minify codes to speed up the loading speed of a web page. The process entails the streaming of codes by removing unnecessary characters for code execution. In code minification, we get rid of
First Load Above the Fold (Lazy Loading)
When viewers visit a site, they see above the fold content first. To speed up a mobile website, we avoid loading the whole page by capitalizing on lazy loading. The techniques allow the loading of content as required with the utmost speed.
Minimum Use of Redirects
The use of too many redirects weighs heavily on sites. Redirects are an excellent SEO strategy. However, I recommend the limitation on the number of redirects applied on a single site.
When users click to view a link, the browser ideally opens the page on that particular link directly from the server. However, if redirects are involved, the browser has to go through different pages to locate the page location.
Summary
The internet is more competitive than the real world, and mobile internet use is on the rise. The speed of mobile sites becomes critical in search engine optimization. As we saw above, certain areas can be limiting the speed of mobile sites reducing our access to the desired traffic.