Many people resented the screeching sound of dial-up internet, but it’s the loading times that were the most painful. Over the past two decades, we've gone from 30-second load times for HTML websites to near-instant streaming of 4K movies. User expectations are at all-time highs.
So yeah, speed tests are important. Read more about why, how often to run them, and the best tools for the job.
Use this checklist as an inspiration for making website optimizations that can improve page load times.
- Optimize Images
Images can dramatically increase page load times, so it’s important to optimize them to minimize their size. You may also want to consider avoiding loading images that aren’t immediately on the page when a visitor visits the website.
- Compress Assets
Compress your JavaScript and CSS assets to minimize the size of the information that client browsers need to download. In addition, you can also minify the assets — or compress the actual code to reduce the file size prior to compression.
- Prune Unused Assets
Remove any legacy assets, such as CSS or third-party scripts, in order to reduce the page load time. You should focus on the largest and most intense assets rather than starting with the smallest and easiest assets.
- Use a CDN
Content delivery networks, or CDNs, are a great way to improve page load times by outsourcing the loading of images and other assets. CDNs have a geographically-diverse network that places servers closer to users.
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