Want To Make Your Website Lightning Fast? Here’s How To Do It

Most people don’t realize that their websites are slow until many users visit them at the same time! Even if the host server is in the same country as you, the hardware powering your website could be slow. These days people are too busy to hang around waiting for website content to load. They demand information from the Web in seconds, not minutes!

If you use your website to sell products or services, those few extra seconds of load time will only do one thing. They’ll lead to “abandoned cart syndrome”! In a nutshell, there is where people give up trying to buy something if the website is taking too long to do stuff. As you can imagine, if you keep having lots of abandoned carts, you will lose lots of new customers.

The scary thing about people with slow websites is they seldom think they can do something about it! Some folks just assume that it’s “one of those things” that people have to live with. Well, if you want to have the competitive edge, you must do what it takes to increase your website’s speed!

If you’re unsure of how to boost the speed of your site, you’ve come to the right place! In today’s blog post, I will share with you some practical tips on how you can turbocharge your site. By following these ideas, your slow website will be a distant memory. That’s because you’ll be enjoying life in the fast lane!

Host your website on a fast server

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make to any slow website is by hosting it on a fast server! I know it sounds like I am stating the obvious. But, as you’ve probably gathered, some people assume that there’s no such thing as a “fast” host!

The trouble with many web hosts is they oversubscribe their services. That means they sell more than the resources they have! Their reasoning is that each customer won’t use all their server resources to the max. So, they can add more websites to each physical server.

As you can appreciate, that is a bad idea. Quite often, websites will see spikes in traffic. For example, if the firm behind a site runs a marketing campaign, it’ll encourage people to visit. More visitors in a short space of time means higher resource usage. If the server is struggling to cope with demand, it’ll affect ALL the sites hosted on it.

So, if you’re not the firm running the marketing campaign, you’ve drawn the short straw! For the avoidance of doubt, it’s best to host with a provider that offers fixed disk space and bandwidth. Avoid hosts that offer “unlimited” resources. That’s because no such thing exists!

Quite often, unlimited actually means limited to what they deem a fair usage quota. Of course, they won’t tell you what that is! That means you end up paying for a service that isn’t true. When selecting a new fast host, you’ll often get asked which operating system you want.

I recommend opting for a Windows VPS server for the ultimate in scalability. They are just as good as Linux platforms, but they allow you to run Microsoft-specific code.

Use a CDN (content delivery network)

Let’s say that you’ve found the right host for your needs. Your website runs as quick as a flash in your home country. But, what if you’re likely to have international visitors? Chances are the further away they are, the slower your site will load.

That is no reflection on the host you’ve chosen, by the way. It’s more to do with the way Internet routing works. Data has to pass through several points before reaching its destination. The further you are physically away from a server, the more “hops” there will be.

How can you solve this problem, I hear you ask? Well, one ingenious and low-cost method is to use a CDN or Content Delivery Network! Well-known brands such as Amazon and Google offer CDN hosting services. But, what exactly is a CDN and how can it work for you?

In a nutshell, a CDN “mirrors” your website content across several global servers. When a person types your site URL into your browser, they would usually connect to your server. With a CDN, they get directed to their nearest server.

The redirection process is lightning fast! It will ensure that your site visitors don’t have to wait for your site content to load. Some people choose to load multimedia content like images and videos on a CDN. Others prefer to mirror their entire websites.

It’s worth investigating CDNs because they are super cheap and suitable for your needs. The process of setting up a CDN is straightforward, and you can get up and running in minutes.

Enable compression on your server

One thing that some website owners don’t know is their servers can help make content load quicker. The typical way to make that happen is by compressing text and image content using a process called GZIP.

The compression technology gets executed on the server. It means that your site will load up faster in people’s browsers. There are a couple of ways to enable compression, depending on your server setup.

If your host offers you cPanel, there is an option in there where you can enable compression. Another method is to edit the .htaccess file and add some directives (instructions). Those directive tell your server what to do whenever content gets accessed from visitors.

Most Linux hosts offer GZIP compression through a module called mod_deflate. If you use an NGINX server, you need to enable HttpGzipModule. Last, but not least, IIS hosts need to go to the Configure HTTP Compression section in IIS Manager.

Enable browser caching

It’s likely that some content on your website won’t ever change. This could apply to images, CSS files and so forth. If you don’t enable caching, browsers will download those files for each page visit on your site.

Depending on your server’s environment, you can specify cache settings for certain file types. For instance, you can say that browsers shouldn’t download CSS files for at least a month. If you happen to update those files, browsers will download the new versions for the first time. Afterwards, they will follow the cache rules specified by your server.

If you use a CMS, you can sometimes use plugins or extensions that do this for you. Otherwise, you’ll need to edit your server’s .htaccess or equivalent file.

“Minify” your CSS and JavaScript files

You might not know this fact, but your stylesheet and script files can often take up a lot of disk space. As a result, they take a long time to download to a visitor’s web browser.

Minification refers to the tweaking of each file’s content. It reduces file sizes by removing unnecessary spaces or gaps. It won’t harm the way your site looks or loads. If anything, it will improve the speed of your site!

There are some sites where you can upload your files and then download minified versions. Again, if you use a CMS, you can usually find a plugin to do that for you.

Final thoughts

By following the above tips, you will supercharge your website in no time at all! You can apply those techniques to any hosting environment and website. If you’re not sure about any of those points, there is plenty of online help available. For instance, you could seek help from communities such as Stack Exchange.