Website Design Tips: How to Reduce Website Load Time
An important aspect of website design is to reduce the loading time of the web page to the minimum possible. A slim website design is kind of like an attractive athletic woman, so let’s call this article “A Website Weight Loss Program” that will help your web pages load much faster.
Why is it so important to reduce website load time?
A website has a global reach, but Internet connection speeds in various countries are not the same. There are still many slow dial-up and broadband connections. Recently published research has revealed that unless massive amounts are spent on improving Internet infrastructure, the average global connection speed may show a drop by 2010. Even for those with high-speed connections, the total number of sites relevant websites on the Internet is growing. Quick. This translates directly into less time spent by the viewer per web page. Generally speaking, patience is a rare commodity in today’s world of shrinking resource-to-consumption ratios. Do you want to neglect a large proportion of potential customers all over the world just because your web page load time is slow? If not, follow the steps below to reduce website load time.
Women often work on trimming the hips, shaping the legs, and removing cellulite in various places. Similarly, I’ve categorized “website weight loss program” below into three “broad” categories: graphics, code, and other factors. Keep in mind that you should meticulously follow as many steps as you can to remove redundant fat from your website design and reduce “website load time” to a minimum.
WEBSITE WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM
HAS. CUT out graphics (Slim hips 🙂
1. Avoid Heavy or Complicated Graphic Web Design
Website designs that use a lot of images (especially those with special effects) usually take a long time to load. What if an attractive website keeps losing valuable visitors just because its web pages take too long to load? Try to be discreet and use fewer images/graphics while maintaining the look and impact of the website design. Remember that text links are easily read by search engines and load faster than graphical buttons. Sometimes it is also possible to move large images from an important page to a section such as “Gallery” to reduce the loading time of the web page.
2. Use only optimized images
Optimize each image in editing software like Photoshop. There are different image formats like GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc., so try to save images in the proper format. As a general rule, GIF is best suited for solid-color images and JPEG for real-world scenes. GIF saved in 256 colors should be reduced (as much as possible) to 128, 64 or 32 colors without compromising image quality. To reduce website load time, JPEG files should be saved at the lowest possible quality without spoiling the impact of the image. You can also use PNG if you are sure your users are using newer browsers.
3. Specify the dimensions of the image
When inserting images into HTML, always mention the height and width attributes. This helps the web browser know the size of the image before loading it. The browser will then reserve the area for the images while the rest of the web page layout continues to load, reducing the loading time of the website. Do not use the height and width tags to reduce the size of the image.
4. Preload your images
You can preload some heavy images of the following pages (which can be accessed by clicking the links within the current page) by defining them in the footer of the current web page. For example, img src=”nextimage” height=”1″ width=”1″ inserts a 1×1 pixel image in the footer that the browser reads when the above code has been read. Thereafter, while your visitor is viewing your main page, the images on the next page will continue to download to the viewer’s PC in the background and reduce subsequent web page load times. This is not recommended for AdWords direct landing pages because Google recently announced that a high web page load time will negatively impact the quality score of the landing page.
5. Optimize Flash files
Animating important things can have an impact on the visitor. If possible, avoid animated GIF images in website designs; instead, use Flash with discretion. Always use optimized flash files. There are so many ways to reduce Flash loading time that I’ll cover this in a separate article.
b. Trim the code (Shapely legs 😉
1. Remove useless code:
When using an HTML generator, some extra or empty tags are inserted into the code, for example, breaking spaces, block quotes, unnecessary extra space, blank lines, etc. Even if you code HTML by hand, always manually check your website design code and remove empty or unnecessary HTML tags. Use appropriate DOCTYPE and close all HTML markup elements. The browser will then have less work to match the elements. Clean coding of a web page will not only reduce the loading time of the website, but also increase the text to code ratio and search engine spiders won’t have to spend time figuring out irrelevant stuff.
2. Using external CSS shorthand
CSS helps keep your website design code compact and clean, and its proper use helps reduce website load time. Define common font styles, images, etc. (used in a set of web pages) in a single external CSS. By doing this, you won’t have to insert the same tags over and over again on different pages; just call the css and apply that particular class. With all your boilerplate stuff defined in the CSS file, the browser won’t have to read each tag again. Always use an external CSS file and remember to remove any extra styles that are not used.
Use smaller class names and shorthand CSS instead of putting each CSS attribute on its own line.
For example:
“Body{
background: url(“image.jpg”);
background color: #cccccc;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}”
The above code can be written as follows when using shorthand CSS:
“Body {
background: #cccccc url(‘image.jpg’) repeat-x;
}”
A small properly created external CSS file will substantially reduce the loading time of the website.
3. Use external JavaScript
If you must use JavaScript, combine small common JavaScript files into a single external file and then (for newer browsers) you can compress it. This will reduce the loading time of the website and you will not have to write the script on each web page; the web browser has this file in its cache and will not have to download it every time another web page loads.
4. For Table Based Website Design
Avoid unnecessary nested and full page tables. If you insert a table inside another table, it increases the loading time of the web page because the browser has to read the content located in the innermost table. Avoid unnecessary nested tables, instead split your page into different sections like header, body, footer, etc. according to your design and use a different table for each section. Your browser will be able to load your web page a little faster.
5. Use Tableless Website Designs
Every time a website is opened, the browser must first scan the tables and then load the page content, which increases the website’s load time. With CSS and DIV tags, you can avoid tables altogether and substantially reduce website load time.
against Other factors that reduce the loading time of the website (eliminate cellulite 🙂
1. Host a high-end server with fast connectivity to reduce website load time.
2. If you have a database-driven website, it’s faster and more secure to put your content on one server and your database on another. Consider SSI for common page elements, AJAX for page refreshes, and Jar archives that load faster into the temporary file.
3. Avoid background music files and if it is very necessary to use them, use highly compressed music file formats. Avoid having a lot of things on your website loading from other websites and reduce the number of HTTP requests.
4. Adding a slash to the end of a link like domain.com/contact tells the server that this is a directory page and that it doesn’t have to waste time figuring out what kind of file exists at that address.
5. Using fewer redirects, Iframes, PhP and database queries also helps reduce website load time.
If you have followed the above website weight loss program and made your website design slim and elegant, you will be thrilled every time you see your performance. Remember that quality websites offer a lot of new content. When adding new pages, don’t forget to apply the tips above to reduce website load time.