Making your website load fast is the first step to keep visitors to stay longer. You might have great selling points or a great design, but very few visitors will experience them if it takes a long time to load. Search engines also take the loading time of your website into consideration.
Follow these tips to make your web pages load quickly:
Stick to simple design.
Optimize HTML.
Use plain HTML. Remove all unnecessary or unwanted tags. Try not to use the Tables much. Instead, use CSS for formatting and layout. CSS based design not only makes your website load fast but makes maintenance of your website easy and efficient.
Minimize the use of images and optimize them if you have to use them.
Graphics or Flash are the big contributors to the size of a web page. Minimize graphic usages and try not to use animated GIFs or Flash. Use background colors or fills instead of heavy graphic images.
Use Width and Height properties.
Use width and height properties for images, tables and table cells so that the browser allocate space for the images and render the rest of the page efficiently. The width attribute is more significant than the height value. If you don’t specify the value for the height property, at least do it for the width property.
Use text links.
Try to use text links instead of image buttons. You can make text links attractive by using CSS.
Make CSS and JavaScript external files.
Place CSS as an external file, that is, make it Server Side Include (SSI). Once CSS styles are cached, it’s faster for web pages to load and it’s easier to maintain the styles as well.
Example:
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”class.css” />
Split long content into a few pages.
Split long content into more small-sized web pages. Smaller web pages are easier to read as well.
Check website load time regularly.
Remember to check your web pages’ loading time regularly.
Quick loading web pages are a must for making your website user friendly and it’s important in search engine optimization as well.