Nothing frustrates a browsing users like a slow loading website. A slow site not only discourages end-users but is also not search-engine friendly – Google has just recently released an algorithm update which penalizes slow websites. The means that if you website is slow, that it can cause your website to rank lower in search engine result pages. That essentially, translates to less conversion or fewer page views.
Today, customers have less patience for sites that load slowly or those that have inadequate performance. A faster website will improve your end-user experience and help your site to rank higher in search engines. The site of your speed matters because search engines want to direct users to sites that have the best information and excellent user experience. This article will provide five ways to make your website faster that you need to know.
5 Simple Ways to Make Your Website Faster
Upgrade Your Hosting Plan to a VPS
This is a simple way to make your website faster by paying attention to your server. If you are still using the shared hosting plan, then your website may be slow because you may not have enough resources to handle increased traffic. The following review of using an InMotion VPS hosting explains very clearly the benefits of using a VPS to make your website faster
A VPS hosting plan provides more resources than a shared hosting plan, and this will make your website faster and effective. A VPS is your ultimate solution for slow loading websites and those that expect high traffic or views.
The great thing is that VPS can have resources increased and decreased as necessary. So if you’re experiencing a traffic jump, you might want to upgrade your resources for a few months.
Having the ROOT password of the server also allows you to customize and tweak the virtual server specifically to your needs.
Use the Latest Versions of PHP 7+
If you notice that your website is loading slowly, you need to do some upgrades. It is time that you make upgrades to your PHP. PHP7+ has several advantages over PHP5 as it makes your website faster, makes good use of available resources and helps your site to be mobile-friendly.
As more versions of other PHP7 keep getting released, performance keeps getting better and better. The only problem is that some software is not 100% compatible with the most recent versions of PHP, so upgrade slowly to PHP7 versions incrementally.
Use the Latest Version of MariaDB instead of MySQL
Many websites are now turning to the latest version of MariaDB because it offers the same function, query type, fundamental indexing, and comparison operators like Mysql and most important it makes your website faster. MariaDB is fast and lighter than MySQL.
The latest version of MariaDB can be used a VPS and thus your website performs better than using older versions available in the shared hosting.
Just know that if you are running a shared hosting service, you won’t have the flexibility to upgrade your site to MariaDB. That’s why when we mentioned that a VPS is one of the very first things you need to get if you want your website to get faster!
Use OpCache with PHP7
Cache makes a website get a quick delivery when a user requests it.
While browser caching stores crucial reusable information to make your website faster and minimize server lagging. By caching pages, information will be served faster, and users will not have to wait for long before a page loads.
But OpCache caching is a simple way of making your website faster, but it actually works at the PHP level – at the interpretation level of the compiler essentially.
The great thing is that with a VPS, you can use specific modules of Apache with PHP7 and OpCache to make your website faster.
By doing this, you will be reducing the execution time to generate content that you load from your server, and this improves the overall speed of your website. This PHP level caching makes execution of actual PHP faster than the page-level caching.
Enable HTTP2 to Make Your Website Faster
Enabling your website to use HTTP/2 could lead to happier customers, better ranking in search engines, and happier customers – because once again HTTP2 uses a lot of technology to make websites faster. HTTP2 uses various technologies such as multi-plexing, resuing the same connections, using binary protocols instead of text which essentially results in page pages loading faster than HTTP1 which results in improved user-experience which leads to more conversions.
As with other technology improvements, HTTP2 not only makes your users happy but also makes your site friendly to search engines. This makes your site to be friendly for mobile queries. When your site ranks high in search engines, you will obtain more clicks and consequently high traffic. HTPP2 is faster than HTTP1 because it has various speed optimizations. It makes your website faster and boosts your online sales.
Websites load slowly because of receiving multiple HTTP requests. This implies that if you have so many such requests, then your website will load slowly. Using HTTP2 will make your website faster and help you achieve your target sales volume.
Final Thoughts
We all need faster websites that will help us to accomplish our objectives. A slow-loading site has a negative impact on your revenue and SEO. Website speed matters to your business. Great messaging, high-quality content comes with website design. But all that efforts would be useless unless you have a faster website to display them.
Your customers want a website that loads faster and answers their questions in real time. Search engines also will rank sites that have high speeds highly. This will make your website to appear in the first page of search results and thus making customers see it outright and buy your products or services. This article has provided five simple ways of making your website faster that readers wanted to know.
