Since the widespread introduction of high-speed internet access, users are accustomed to finding things quickly. Web sites can represent a business or a personality in an accurate an enjoyable way, But when that message is so muddled and slow, you run the risk of frustrating an audience and losing an opportunity.
Improving your site’s speed, beyond doing it for vanity purposes, will help your site be more accessible to people with slower connections and streamline any future changes to your site.
Generally speaking – the secret to a fast site is to clean up the code and assets of your site. Sit back and review your site from top to bottom. Find redundancies such as junk code and strip them out, saving you valuable load seconds.
Here are my top 4 practical tips to make your website design code leaner and nimble, to help your visitors browse your site in a flash (if they want to!)
Run YSlow on your site to identify quick-fixes
A key part of improving the speed of your website is having a frame of reference. It’s a good idea to check the current of your site before and after making changes to your site and see how they may have increased your sites loading speed. You can check your sites speed by using the ySlow plugin (http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/). Doing this sort check now and then will also help keep you up to date on how your site is doing.
Spring-Clean your Code
One particular way to trim down the load speed is to carefully review at the actual HTML and CSS of the site itself. On many occasions, even the best website designers can write functional but messy code with gaps and white space. Removing these chunks of white space form the HTML and the CSS can improve your sites speed.
Avoid in-line Javascript CSS styles
Another consideration in website design is how the CSS and Javascript coding is implemented; this is an important part of the functionality of your site. Some web designers will code the CSS and the Javascript in-line or inside of the HTML code. But if you want to improve your site’s speed, CSS and Java script should be coded into separate files. A good web designer should have no problem making this change.
Don’t be lazy and use uncompressed images
Image size is another important consideration, and you should always try and insure your pictures, video, and audio files are broad enough to be clear, coherent, and audible, but not so big that it takes web browsers a long time to load them. One solid method to deal with image size, in particular, is to compress files that already fit the dimensions you need you require for the page before you upload them to your web server.
Conclusion
These methods will ensure that more users will be able to enjoy your site. People tend to avoid websites that have speed and lag issues, and this sort of bad press can follow your site around and tarnish your reputation.
Smart website design is as much about the way your site functions and the way it works for the user as it is about branding and access.
What other tricks have you employed to speed up your site?