Let’s talk optimisation
Last week’s blog post discussed the importance of website responsiveness. This week, I wanted to talk about something equally important: website optimisation.
According to research, we’re a very impatient generation and if a website doesn’t load fast enough, we basically leave. And when I say fast, I mean fast: apparently, any longer than a three second wait and we go somewhere else!
Basically if you want to retain as much traffic (and ultimately business) on your website as possible, ensure it’s optimised. And that counts for every page on your website.
So what can you do to make your website faster?
- Optimise your pictures: Before you upload any images, ensure they are as small as possible while still being of good quality. If you’re not a graphic designer and don’t know how to do this prior to uploading them, download a WordPress plug-in. There’s many available but I recommend (and use) Smush and Image Optimiser.
- Avoid embedding large video files: These are heavy and will massively impact your website’s loading time. I recommend uploading these onto a streaming website like Youtube. I’m currently working on a website which has a video background on the homepage. It’s such a large file that I couldn’t even upload it even if I wanted too. So instead, I uploaded it onto Youtube and it works beautifully.
- Clean up: Keep the back-end of your website tidy. If you don’t use any images anymore, delete them. Any de-activated plug-ins? Delete them. Any un-used themes? You got it, delete!
As some of you may know, I only design WordPress websites, but I’m sure many of these rule apply to other platforms as well.
Enjoy,
Babs