More people use mobile to access the web. Fewer use slow dial-up. In certain areas, such as social media and search, mobile usage has already surpassed desktop usage. Smartphone users hate waiting for pages to load on cellular data.

No matter the medium via which your website’s visitors arrive, speed is of the utmost importance. Google found 100-400ms delay drops traffic. 1/3 visitors leave after 2s wait. Plus, it’s quite unlikely that they’ll return. Because Google now considers page load times when ranking websites, a slow site is less likely to appear on the first page of search engine results.

Another way to improve your website’s speed is by breaking down the process into two main groups: reducing the size of your files and minimizing the number of times your site communicates with the server.

Speed Matters

The following list only scratches the surface for website optimization, but it gives you a general idea of what can be done.

Image Optimization

Images are the vast majority of your site’s file size, and optimizing images to reduce their size can make your site load several times faster.

The following list contains key points for optimizing images on your site:

Every trip to the server in the form of an HTTP request takes a few milliseconds, and those milliseconds can add up. All those little Twitter widgets, Facebook Like buttons, and advertisements can make dozens of server requests each. You may be surprised to see how many server requests even a simple website makes.