In 2018, page speed is everything. Google now takes into consideration the speed of your website when deciding where to rank you. 47 percent of visitors expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds, and 40 percent of visitors will leave the website if the loading process takes more than 3 seconds. So it should be fairly obvious by now, having a website that loads fast is extremely important to the success of your site. So, here are my 5 tips to ensuring your website is really, really, fast.

1. Hosting

Hosting is the first place to start. Depending on the size of your website, and the volume of traffic you’re expecting, having a good, reliable host is vitally important. Having a bad host can cause unnecessary wait time. Cheaper web hosting companies will sell shared hosting packages to multiple websites and bog down the processors and amount of bandwidth across the server making the websites slow. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, then it’s probably time to change your web host company. A good web host is something you should never cheap out on.

2. Never use a premium theme

Premium WordPress themes may seem like a cheap and easy way to get your website up and running, but they often come preinstalled with tons of bloat that you’d never need or use. They definitely serve their purpose, but you don’t need to buy the whole cow when all you need is milk. I definitely recommend seeking out a bespoke solution, tailor made to meet the specific needs and criteria of your business/project.

3. Try to reduce the amount of plugins you use

Some plugins have tons of features you don’t need – or even if you need them, you may not need them on every page of your site. For instance, a lot of people opt for an image slider on their homepage, but the scripts are loaded on all pages via the plugin. Once you know what plugins are slowing you down, you can make an informed decision on wether to keep them or not.

4. Minify your CSS and JavaScript

A simple trick for any developers reading this article, minify your Stylesheets and Scripts. If you code using SASS or LESS, the chances are you are using a preprocessor like Prepros. Preprocessors come with handy settings that automatically process your SASS/LESS files into smaller, minified versions automatically. Smaller website files are much quicker for the page to load and can drastically shrink load times.

5. CSS at the top, JavaScript at the bottom

Another simple and handy tip for you developers, load your CSS at the top and JavaScript at the bottom. You should always put your CSS in the head (obviously), but move any JavaScript to the bottom where possible, it prevents the browser from loading any big scripts until the page has loaded, meaning quicker load times.

So there you have it, my 5 tips for a quicker website. I hope these tips helped you. If you have any questions then feel free to get in touch, I’m sure I can help you solve your digital problems.