There are numerous factors that can determine the usability, accessibility, and searchability of a website.
The speed is one of the most crucial factors that can make or break the user experience of a website. Obviously, visitors don't want to stay on your site if it takes longer to load a page. A visitor prefers a site that loads quickly and gives a better user-experience.
Therefore, it is essential for a web developer to optimize the speed of a site by considering the relevant factors and elements.
A visually- appealing design can drive visitors, but for better conversions you need to convert them into potential customers. And for this, you need to follow some authentic as well as modern-age techniques that can help you improve the speed of your site.
In this blog post, we will light upon some of the essential tips for web developers that can help them in boosting the performance as well as user experience of a site.
Let's get started!
1. Minimize the HTTP and Dependency Requests
Dependency requests are one of the most critical aspects that can downturn the speed of a site. Each additional request sums up bloat and increases the chances of complexity while parsing and downloading a web page.
Therefore, it is essential for you to limit or minimize the dependency requests and try to use alternative optimization techniques such as SVG or sprites (if possible).
If you are hosting a large-sized website and you need a few dozen of requests, then you should use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) service. With the use of CDN service, you can distribute the content of your site more quickly and efficiently to the web visitors.
However, it won't decrease your file size, but it can eliminate any slow server connections that can help you improve the speed of your site.
See Also: Key Advantages of Using CDN for Your WordPress Site
2. Write Clean, Sharp and Readable Code
Most of the web developers make a mistake by generating complicated code while developing a site. It could reduce the speed of a site as inefficient CSS or JavaScript code can affect the loading time.
Instead of writing the exact path down a chain of selectors, you can use the smallest individually identifiable selectors. Both the methods are adequate for styling the same element, but the second option is much more convenient, quick and efficient.
But bloated JavaScript can be worst than inadequately written CSS. Most of the developers overlook this error, but in real it is one of the biggest reasons for a sluggish site. Copying and pasting an external JS library into the website is also another reason for slowing loading site.
Luckily, such situations occur very rarely, but it is still better to adopt some practices to call JS last if possible, especially when it comes to Google Analytics.
So, you can enable the browsers to parse via the head files (HTML requests, CSS, etc.) and show the markup to settle down the things.
3. Production Verses Development Environment Code Bases
You will find a very stiff difference while comparing your development and production level code bases. This step could decrease all of your file sizes all around the board.
But, it is equally important for the smaller scale of projects as well. The biggest difference between these two environments can be observed with the image compression and the compression of code.
Ultimately, web developers want to speed up the production environment while the development environment should remain the same, only reduce the image or code compression optimization.
With the help of Photoshop tool, you can compress the images with ease. It is a very popular photo editing and optimizing software that quickly optimizes your images, without any hassle.
When it comes to code, the best utilization of compression depends on the language you are working with. You can compress both the HTML and CSS code by using the most relevant tool. You can use Google's htmlcompressor and the YUI compressor for CSS.
Tool: JavaScript, CSS Code Minifier - Compress / Optimize CSS, JS Files
4. Write Simple HTML Code
Writing adequate HTML also helps you boost the speed of your site. CSS resets usually target all common components and enforce "resetting" styling on them.
So, if you are not targeting that additional div, it is likely to slow down the things by having its padding and margin reset at a minimum.
An additional div. won't affect anything, but when you begin ending up with dozens of them, then things go messy. With the help of more elements to the HTML5 specifications, you will get much more flexibility in this particular area.
Google Loves Simple and Clean Code
Search engine optimization is one of the most productive ways of promoting or influencing the online presence of a site. But there is a lot of competition on the web and to occupy the higher position within the search engine platforms, you need to write clean and readable code.
Google and other search engines quickly read and index sites that have simple and clean codes. This improves the ranking of your site on search engine platforms and also boosts its performance.
See Also: How To Protect Your Website and Search Engine Rank Today
Conclusion
As a web developer, it is imperative for you to keep yourself updated with the latest technologies and techniques. With the help of these tips, you will be able to optimize the speed of a site more effectively and efficiently.