If you’ve commissioned a new website you will, very reasonably, expect it to be super fast on launch. But how do you ensure it remains so? To keep your website loading quickly and not frustrating your loyal and potential customers it’s important to understand how website speed is assessed and how you can maintain your website so you stay ahead of the game.

Website Speed: The Metrics

A web page doesn’t appear on your screen all in one go. As a website visitor you’ll type in a URL, or click on website link which sets off a chain reaction. First of all your browser will have to find where that website lives, it then connects to the server, which then sends back HTML, which your browser will then read. As it reads the instructions in the code it starts loading and visually building – ‘painting’ – the content as it arrives on to your screen, finally it will become interactive so you can click your way around.

There being so many elements which go into a web page appearing on your screen it’s perhaps not surprising that for Google  there are several key metrics against which a website’s speed is judged.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This one is all about loading performance. It measures how long it takes for a web page to show the largest piece of content on it, the main hero image for instance. A good score from a UX perspective is under 2.5 seconds.

• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): This is the interaction side of things, it relates to how quickly a page responds when a person clicks or taps on it. Under 200 milliseconds is what you want.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is a measure of the visual stability of a page — is it all steady or do elements like buttons jump around mid-click. A good score is under 0.1.

Taken together these metrics make up what’s called Google’s Core Web Vitals. And Google highly recommends achieving a high score for success in SEO as well as to ensure a positive user experience.

Website Speed and UX and SEO

Website speed is one of those things most of us don’t think about when browsing, unless we hit a frustratingly slow website. At which point, depending on your nature you either persist, or exit to try and find what you want elsewhere.

And if you’re leaving the site before you found, or bought, what you were after you’re unlikely to be the only one – meaning that website is likely to have a high bounce rate. And as a high bounce rate indicates people aren’t happy it has a direct, negative impact on SEO.

The Factors That Slow You Down

So what actually causes a slow website?

1. Oversized images: If you’ve ever tried sharing multiple images via email then you’re likely aware of how big the file sizes can be. If you’ve got an image heavy website and you’ve not been compressing them before uploading you will quickly find your website slowing.
2. Bloated code: This is one for your developer/s. Essentially, if the code which powers your website has redundant elements in it then each of those will be adding bloat and needlessly slowing down your site. This is one of the reasons why we don’t use pre-built themes.
3. Third-party scripts: You absolutely shouldn’t limit the functionality on your website, but you should be cautious about adding anything and everything and undertake regular reviews of what you are and aren’t using as this will naturally change over time. All these tools, like live chat for instance, take up space and can impact upon performance.
4. Slow hosting: Not all website hosting companies and packages are the same, hence the wide variety in cost. You can do all the right things but if your website doesn’t have the most appropriate hosting package then it it’ll start to run slowly.
5. Lack of caching: This is when copies of your website’s files are stored in a temporary location so they’re not downloaded each time they’re required to open a web page. If your site doesn’t store frequently accessed data locally for return visitors, it will load everything from scratch each time.
6. No CDN (Content Delivery Network): If you’re serving content globally without a CDN, visitors far from your server will experience slower load times.

How to Improve Your Website Speed

To address some of the factors listed above you may well need web development support, but there are some things you can do yourself to keep your website well maintained. And it’s worth being aware of the elements you can’t personally control so you know what to ask for and what to expect from a web developer when it comes to speed.

• Optimise images: Compress your images before loading them and ensure your video is hosting externally (on YouTube for instance). There are lots of free tools available for image compression online and you need no technical knowledge in order to get started.
• Audit your code: Or ask your developer to. They should be looking for, and removing, unused CSS and JavaScript. As with image compression there are online tools which can help here, eg. PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.
• Use reliable hosting: Shop around and ask questions, you want to ensure you have the correct hosting package to support your current needs as well as flexibility for your future requirements.
• Implement caching: Or ask your developer to. Both browser-side and server-side caching can help reduce load times.
• Deploy a CDN: We recommend using Cloudflare to deliver your site’s content close to your users geographically.
• Limit third-party scripts: As we touched upon above, we don’t want you to not have what you need but do ensure you’re using everything you have.

If your site feels sluggish or your Core Web Vitals aren’t where they should be, it might be time to undertake some maintenance. Contact our team today to get your website reviewed.