Although the number of users accessing the internet on slow dial-up connections is shrinking (3-5% in US), the percentage of folks using mobile phones to access the web is increasing dramatically; and for some sectors, such as social media and search, mobile has already exceeded desktop usage. If you have a smartphone, then you know how frustrating it is to wait for a web page to fully display over a cellular data connection, therefore website performance is very important to take a look at.

Website performance is critical regardless of how your users access your website. A study by Google showed that in the addition of  just 100 to 400 milliseconds to their search results page resulted in reduced searches. Other studies show that users expect a site to load in under 2 seconds, and nearly a third of your audience will leave your site for another if it doesn’t. Furthermore, those people aren’t likely to come back. Google has added site speed to its search algorithm, so if your website is taking too long to load, it’s not likely to show up in that first screen of results.

There are many things you can do to improve the performance of your website, and they fall under two broad categories: limiting file sizes and reducing the number of requests to 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.