The PageSpeed (also known as loading time) describes the time required for a website to load completely. The faster a page loads, the sooner visitors can see the content and navigate within the website. A fast loading time also ensures that visitors can access a website at all and do not abandon their visit due to long waiting times before they are able to see any content.
Page Loading Process
The page loading process, which determines the PageSpeed, can roughly be divided into four steps/areas:
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- The server response time, also known as Time To First Byte (TTFB). This is the time between the request (e.g. clicking a link in the search results) and the browser receiving the first data from the website's server.
- The amount of time required to download the content of the requested HTML page.
- The time required to render the page in the browser, i.e. to visually display the data from HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
- The time required before the content can be interacted with (e.g. clicking a button), also known as Time To Interact (TTI).
Why is loading time so important?
Loading time has a significant impact on whether users stay on your website and make a purchase or look elsewhere to fulfill their needs. A loading time of just 3 seconds can result in a loss of 40% of mobile users. In 2018, Google analyzed 11 million landing pages in 213 countries that were linked to by mobile Google Ads. The following data was found:
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- More than half of web traffic comes from mobile users. At the same time, conversion rates for mobile users are significantly lower than those for desktop users.
- Although most mobile traffic now runs over fast 4G networks, mobile pages are still slow and overloaded with too many elements.
- 70% of the analyzed pages required 5 seconds or more to load Above The Fold; loading the entire page took more than 7 seconds.
- The longer a page takes to load and the more elements it contains, the more drastically the bounce rate increases, while the likelihood of conversion decreases.
6 tips to help you make your website faster
Although it is possible to improve PageSpeed with little effort, very few people take the time to optimize it. The following tips are intended to help you make your website faster in a simple and straightforward way.
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- Compress images and use the right image format – images are of course essential, but visual files generally account for a very large proportion of data transfer. The .png file type in particular can help improve PageSpeed because it requires much less storage space while maintaining the same image quality.
- Reduce HTTP requests – HTTP is the standard communication protocol on the Internet. With a little optimization and by combining various steps in data transmission, you can achieve significant improvements here.
- Enable server-side caching – a cache is essentially an online temporary storage that keeps parts of a page in its “memory.” Returning users then do not have to load the entire page from scratch, resulting in faster PageSpeed.
- Optimize CSS and JavaScript – additional scripts are practical and useful, but they require a lot of additional bandwidth from the server. Various tools can help reduce the amount of data and bring more structure to the code.
- Avoid cookies, as far as possible. This means that there is less data to store and therefore less data to retrieve.
- Avoid unnecessary redirects. Make sure that the Google Bot does not have to take avoidable detours when crawling your website, and of course neither do your users. Avoiding unnecessary detours ultimately benefits you as well.
Do you have any further questions about this topic? Or do you need help designing your website from a professional web agency in Munich? Then feel free to contact us!
