What is Page Speed and How to Improve it

Page speed is a fundamental factor of your website that often goes overlooked. When developing your website, most people tend to focus on the overall aesthetic of your web design, the navigation abilities, as well as the SEO capabilities. But page speed is a fundamental aspect to your website’s success that you should be integrating into your marketing strategy.

What is Page Speed?

Page speed is exactly what it sounds like, it’s the length of time that it takes for the content on your webpage to load. It is determined by several different factors, including a site’s server, image size, page file size, and more.

Why is Page Speed Important?

According to Google, page speed is a direct ranking factor and one of the many factors that goes into SEO page rankings. When a page’s load time is extended, the bounce rate is significantly higher and causes lower conversion rates.

Your Consumer’s Experience

Your consumers should be your first priority. That’s why creating a quick loading web page is paramount to creating brand loyalty. Consumers are complex and have varying levels of needs and expectations when seeking out brands. Therefore, having a webpage that has a long load time, will cause your consumers to click off and create negative feelings towards your brand. As a result, page speed should be one of your top priorities for your website.

How Can I Improve My Website’s Page Speed?

• Combine Files: The largest files on your website will most likely be HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. In order to boost your page speed, you should combine files through eliminating unnecessary formatting, whitespace, and code.
• Defer JavaScript Loading: Deferring large files (such as JavaScript) from loading until other aspects of your webpage has loaded, is an effective way to enhance your website’s speed.
• Pay Attention to Images: Although the visual appearance of your website is a fundamental part of your web design, you should try to eliminate large image files when possible. Images take a long time to load and can add precious seconds onto your page speed.

Page Speed on Your Website

To be successful in today’s competitive digital market, creating ease for your consumer through strategically created files to decrease wait time is extremely important. Not only will this create brand loyalty, it will increase website traffic, and ultimately boost sales. If you have any questions about your page speed or web design, don’t hesitate to reach out to the digital strategists at Kraus Marketing! Contact us today to get started!