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There are two key reasons why website speed is important:

Google uses website loading speeds in its page-ranking algorithms.
Nearly half of all users abandon a web page that takes more than three seconds to load.

So, if you want your customers to find you via search engines in the first instance, and stay long enough when they do to make a purchase, you need a fast-loading website. Most experts recommend that website loading speed should be below two seconds.

Here’s how to get your website working faster.

Test your website speed

First things first, find out how fast (or slow) your website already is using any one of a number of free website speed testing tools. We like Pingdom and Google Developers.

It never hurts to check out the competition, so why not see how your main rivals’ sites are performing too, and aim to be better than all of them?

Speed Test

Optimise images

Page speed is directly related to how much demand is placed on your server, thus loading images – particularly large, high-resolution ones – will significantly slow your website down. Make all the images you use as small as possible without sacrificing quality, ideally below 70kb.

There are lots of free tools that let you compress images; we like TinyPNG.

TinyPNG

Cache pages

Enabling caching can help reduce your website response times, as your site will only have to create the content once instead of every time the page is visited. If your hosting service provider doesn’t provide server-side caching, there are numerous software add-ons and configurations available that’ll let you do this. We use PHP to enable output buffering, more can be found on this here.

Improve and optimise coding

Writing code efficiently helps to reduce the file sizes, thereby improving your website speed. Use shorthand coding wherever possible, utilise all the coding space available (ie delete extra spaces, indentations and line spaces), and minify CSS code and JavaScript (Google recommends minifying all JavaScript files over 4096 bytes).

Use a content distribution network (CDN)

A CDN typically reduces the distance that data needs to travel to the end users, thereby improving website speed.

CDNs are quick and easy to implement, with many taking only a few minutes to set up. We’ve experimented with the Amazon AWS Platform which is easy to setup but offers a host of advanced features.

Conclusion

Having a website that looks great and functions well is important, but you mustn’t overlook the importance of website speed. A fast-performing website provides a better experience for your users and, crucially, improves your search engine ranking.

It’s been over a month since Google launched it’s much publicised “Mobile search update”. In this post we reflect on the update and provide some cold hard facts that cut through the nonsense and scare mongering.

April 21st’s mobile-friendly update boosts mobile search rankings for pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices.

SCARE MONGERING

On the lead up to the launch of Google’s mobile search change, I’d bet my kids that you would have received numerous emails from unscrupulous web companies using various scare tactics to attempt to win your business. I received so many calls off the back of this spam from a wide range of our customers. These blanket spam emails were sent out regardless if a website was mobile ready or not.

Although some of the points made in these emails were partly true they all followed the same general undertone… “If you don’t have a mobile ready website your website will drop from Google”.

THE GOOGLE UPDATE AND WHAT GOOGLE HAVE SAID

On the 21st of April 2015, Google updated their search to include a new algorithm to weight mobile optimised web pages higher than pages designed for only desktop browsers. This wasn’t a surprise, in fact Google had made suggestions and announcements a long time before the update. However on the day Google confirmed exactly what this all meant.

Google said the update does the following:

Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
Affects search results in all languages globally
Applies to individual pages, not entire websites

Google also made a change to their algorithms information web page to include a new section for mobile. The new mobile paragraph simply says:
“Includes improvements designed specifically for mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones.”

4 THINGS TO CONSIDER

Here’s three things to consider when digesting this information.

1. Mobile Online Search – Mobile optimised websites should only receive better rankings when searching from a mobile device. Common sense really, this means if someone searches from a desktop they will see no difference.

2. Scare Mongering – The majority of marketing emails sent out by other agencies have given the impression that your website will completely drop out of Google if you don’t update your website immediately. This just isn’t true, Google have a habit of making big changes but making big changes over time. Research is showing that mobile websites are having a nominal improvement across various searches. There is definitely a difference, but not as big or severe as you may have been led to believe. However beware as Google will be sure to turn this setting up over the coming year or years.

3. Are Your Competitors Ready – With so many companies stuck in the same boat you probably have more time than you think. If you check, a lot of your competitors probably aren’t mobile ready either. This gives you some added time to get your site updated to take advantage when Google increase their weighting in the mobile algorithm.

4. Pages Not Entire Sites – Currently the new algorithm ranks individual pages and not entire websites based on their mobile readiness. This means a quick fix could be put in place for your most important content pages.

THE CONCLUSION

So should you have a mobile ready website? Yes without doubt you should!

But not because you’re going to drop out of Google and never receive a web lead again. You should have a mobile website because it’s what your visitors want and need. Some business sectors are now seeing 80% of their visitors browsing using a mobile device. Not giving a dedicated mobile website will give a terrible user experience to your customer they will likely get frustrated and move on.

So our conclusion and advice is, don’t get a mobile website because Google tells you to. Get one because your visitors do!

Take a look at one of our recent responsive websites:
http://www.extex.co.uk
http://www.crosswater-contracts.co.uk
http://www.westhill-insurance.co.uk
http://www.bespoke.ie

We hope you’ve found this blog post interesting. For more information about mobile websites please get in touch with us at Kick, we’re alway happy to help. http://www.kickinteractive.net/contact-kick-interactive/

If you would like to check how mobile optimised your website is take a look at Google mobile friendly testing too:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly

Category: Front End

The importance of website speed