In addition to the above-mentioned ways to optimize your website’s performance, there are many smaller steps you can take to help minimize loading times. These include:
- Keeping redirects to a minimum
- Specifying character encoding in the HTML document
- Removing any faulty content
- Avoiding excessive use of plugins in the CMS
- Limiting collected information in cookies
- Using favicons (since browsers always search the webserver for the favicon.ico file)
- Activate HTTP/2
If you’re yet to use one of these tools to make your site run faster, you should start now to keep up with the competition. According to a survey by Google in 2017, the chance of a user abandoning a mobile website increases by 123% if loading times exceed 10 seconds. The chance of page abandonment is 90% higher where page load speed exceeds 5 seconds. Hence, website speed should become a priority.
If you don’t want to lose potential customers due to inadequate loading times, you should optimize your website to succeed in the mobile era.