The number of seconds it takes for a website to load is very important. This initial loading time is the first impression a website makes on a user. Once upon a time, when we used 28.8kb modems, we’d wait thirty seconds and think it was slow but acceptable. As the speed of our connections has increased our patience has reduced. We now want pages to load instantly.
There are a lot of factors that influence load time, from the ‘weight’ of the page, the total number of items to be downloaded and how they’re put together to the location and speed of the server it’s running on. Most of the websites we make are content managed meaning each time a page is requested it gets glued together – that is the text is pulled from a database and placed in the page, the correct scripts and features are added to the page etc. All of this work is done before the page can even be sent to the user. What I do now is ‘cache’ (save) a copy of the page once all work has been done and send that version to the computer. Any scripts that are included in the page are also optimised and cached ready for rapid deployment. Everything then gets compressed and pushed to user ensuring it’s as small as possible.
Before any website is launched it is rigorously tested and optimised – see image at the top of this post. The example below shows how browser caching is used to ensure a site runs fast. The left pie chart shows the initial download, about 100k, the left shows the subsequent download if the page is visited again – just under 3k – a massive difference. This was created by carefully optimising each file used and choosing the correct settings on the web server to ensure the users computer keeps a copy of the files.
But perhaps the most important and least considered aspect of making a fast website is to choose the correct hosting company (this is where your website ‘lives’ on the Internet). I set up to identical websites on different web hosts – one very popular one, and one carefully selected one. On the popular host the page took an average of 6 seconds to load, on the other it was under 1 second. You don’t have to think long to know which we use for our clients. The other benefit of using specialist hosting is your website is safer. If you’re setting up a shop of office you don’t just go for the cheapest solution – you look for the one in the correct location, with the right facilities and of the best quality you can afford. You should do the same when hosting websites.
Our hosting partner recently relocated their servers to an even faster facility complete with full network redundancy and security features such as ‘a state-of-the-art IP CCTV system and access control system form part of the comprehensive security arrangements, including man-traps, interlocked doors, and biometric iris scanners.’
All this ensures your websites are safe, secure and fast.
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