Page speed is the measurement of how fast the content on your page loads, and can play an important factor in search engine optimization as well as creating a more enjoyable user experience for visitors.

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Compress images and files

It’s good practice to compress your CSS, HTML and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes, and this can be done with many different software applications designed for file compression, however we’d recommend Gzip.

However for images on your site, we’d recommend using an application like Adobe’s Photoshop to optimize your images instead of compressing them with Gzip, as doing so could dramatically reduce the image’s quality.

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Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML

By optimizing your site code i.e. removing unnecessary spaces, commas and other characters), you can dramatically increase your page speed. Google recommends using CSSNano and UglifyJS.

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Optimizing your images

Ensuring your images are in the correct format as well as being compressed for the web will help your site loading speed tremendously. Be sure that image sizes are no larger than they need to be and that graphics with fewer than 16 colors are formatted as PNGs, while photographs, JPEGs.

Using CSS sprites to create a template that you use frequently on your site, e.g. buttons and icons. CSS sprites combine your images into one large image that loads all at once (which means fewer HTTP requests) and then display only the sections that you want to show. Therefore, you save time by not waiting for multiple images to load individually.

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Use content distribution networks

Content distribution networks, CDNs, are networks of servers that are used to distribute the load of delivering content. In simple terms, copies of your site are stored at multiple, geographically diverse data centres so that users have faster and more reliable access to your site.

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