How Web Developers Can Make Websites Lighter to Load More Quickly
Tags: webdev, host
Published: 2023-04-03 16:28:52


![Web loading speed](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/jk2twziv8uknv9nbk3ku.png)

Website speed has a big impact on user experience, SEO, and conversion rates. Performance optimization is essential for a website to draw visitors and maintain their interest. Here, we discuss many methods programmers could employ to accelerate a website:

## **Website performance testing
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Speed tests are used to evaluate the performance of websites. Frequent testing can help developers find performance improvements or reductions. A speed test should also help developers find any and all locations where a website's performance is being hampered as well as prospective areas for improvement.

Many of the top-notch site speed tests are free and available in abundance to evaluate performance. A number of free tests are provided by the Cloudflare-affiliated website WebPageTest.org, which also creates extensive evaluations of how quickly different page components load. Using WebPageTest.org, websites may be evaluated for various hardware configurations and network connection speeds.

Google also offers [PageSpeed Insights](https://pagespeed.web.dev/) for in-depth performance evaluation. All HTTP requests, the size of any requested assets, and the response time in milliseconds are all shown in the Network tab of Google Chrome DevTools. Developers can use this data to assess the effectiveness of their website.

## **Go for CDN (Content Delivery Network)
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CDNs speed up websites by putting cached copies of material in numerous locations across the world. CDN cache servers are frequently located closer to end users than the host server, also known as the origin server. Instead of going directly to the hosting server, which may be hundreds of miles away and
connected to multiple autonomous networks, requests for content are routed through a CDN server. A CDN can considerably speed up the loading of pages.

## **Image Optimization
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Because picture files are often larger than HTML and CSS files, they frequently take the longest time to load on a website. Images make up the majority of internet traffic. Thankfully, image optimization facilitates faster image loading. The resolution of photos can be decreased, images can be compressed, and files can be made smaller using image optimizers and image compressors, which are readily available online for free.

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## Minify JavaScripting and CSS

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To make a piece of code simpler for computers to comprehend and execute, things like code comments, whitespace, and unused semicolons should be eliminated. As a result, JavaScript and CSS files are considerably compressed, which speeds up their loading and uses less bandwidth. Speed won't be considerably increased by minification on its own. But if combined with these additional
recommendations, it will enhance website performance.

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## Reduce HTTP Requests If Possible

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For the vast majority of webpages; numerous resources, including graphics, scripts, and CSS files, browsers are required to perform multiple HTTP requests. In reality, many of these requests are
required by numerous websites. The round trip that each request makes to and from the server holding the resource might lengthen the total load time of a webpage. Due to the fact that the site loads resources from various different providers, a problem with [web hosting](https://www.serversea.pk/blog/what-is-web-hosting-web-hosting-explained-for-beginners) may also impact how quickly or slowly it loads.

Due to these potential issues, the total number of assets that each page needs to load should be kept to a minimum. A speed test should help identify the HTTP requests that are taking the longest. For instance, if images are causing a page to load slowly, developers can hunt for a speedier image hosting provider (such as a CDN).

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## Go for Browser HTTP Caching

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Browsers save copies of static files in the browser cache rather of continuously requesting the same content, which enables them to load recently visited webpages much more quickly. The developers of a website can encourage browsers to cache certain elements that won't change frequently. Instructions for browser caching can be found in the headers of HTTP responses from the hosting server. Visitors that frequently access a certain page will have quicker load speeds as a result of the server having to transmit significantly less data to the browser.

Avoid using redirects whenever you can When visitors to one website are instead directed to another, this is known as a redirect. Redirects extend the loading time of a website by a fraction of a second or even by a full second. When creating a website that is performance-optimized, every second counts. Redirects should only be used when absolutely necessary, despite the fact that they are occasionally unavoidable.