While more and more people are getting access to high speed internet, there are many left on dial up. Be kind to those visitors and do a few, simple things to speed up your webpages. Think the speed of your website doesn’t matter? Think again…

A 1-second delay in page load time yields:

• 11% fewer page views
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction

A study found that:

• 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
• 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
• 52% of online shoppers say quick page loads are important for their loyalty to a site.

Here are some tips you can use to speed up your website:

• Minimize HTTP Requests

1. 80% of a Web page’s load time is spent downloading the different pieces-parts of the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. An HTTP request is made for each one of these elements, so the more on-page components, the longer it takes for the page to render.
2. That being the case, the quickest way to improve site speed is to simplify your design.
3. Streamline the number of elements on your page.
4. Use CSS instead of images whenever possible.
5. Combine multiple style sheets into one.
6. Reduce scripts and put them at the bottom of the page.

• Enable compression

1. Most web servers can compress files in Gzip format before sending them for download, either by calling a third-party module or using built-in routines
2. IIS: Configure HTTP Compression: add this line to your web.config: <urlCompression doStaticCompression=”false” doDynamicCompression=”false” /> or enable IIS compression on your webserver.

• Enable browser caching

1. When you visit a website, the elements on the page you visit are stored on your hard drive in a cache, or temporary storage, so the next time you visit the site, your browser can load the page without having to send another HTTP request to the server.
2. Use:
   • In page headers: <%@ OutputCache Duration=”60″ VaryByParam=“*” %>
   • In web.config: <staticContent><clientCache cacheControlMode=”UseMaxAge” cacheControlMaxAge=”30.00:00:00″ /></staticContent>
   • Cache your data in the code behind

• Minify Resources

1. When you visit a website, the elements on the page you visit are stored on your hard drive in a cache, or temporary storage, so the next time you visit the site, your browser can load the page without having to send another HTTP request to the server.
2. Minify CSS: Remove comments and sources from CSS files, and combine CSS files. Optimize the CSS files and avoid redundancy in styles.
3. Minify JavaScript using the compression tools to get the minimum file size possible:
4. Minify HTML

• Too Much White Space Isn’t Good,  collapse whitespaces
• Omit Redundant Tags and Attributes
• Use Descriptive ALT Values
• Use Less Meta Tags
• Remove All Comments
• Don’t Use Complex Tables and Reduce the number of nested tables
• Use Name Colours Rather Than Hex
• Ensure All Tags are Closed
• Reduce ViewState

• Optimize images

1. The images on your site can take up a lot of bandwidth, which affects the loading time of your page.
2. Set Image Resolution to 72dpi
3. Optimize GIF, JPG, PNG files
4. Link Thumbnails to Larger Images
5. Use Proper Image Formats
6. Use Styled Text Instead of Graphic Text
7. Don’t Scale Images
8. The Fewer Graphics the Better

• Optimize CSS Delivery

1. CSS holds the style requirements for your page. Generally, your website accesses this information in one of two ways: in an external file, which loads before your page renders, and inline, which is inserted in the HTML document itself.
2. The external CSS is loaded in the head of your HTML with code that looks something like this:<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”all” href=http://yourURL/style.css />

• Reduce the number of plugins you use on your site

1. Too many plugins slow your site, create security issues, and often cause crashes and other technical difficulties.
2. Remove social network buttons
3. Consider lazyloading — or on-demand content

References:

https://www.monitis.com/blog/2011/05/29/30-tips-to-optimize-htmlcssimages-for-smooth-web-experience

http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/12/11/speed-up-your-website/https://www.woorank.com/en/p/page-load-time

http://www.sitepoint.com/complete-guide-reducing-page-weight/