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Home » The Famous Blog » 3 Simple Steps to Speed Up Your Website

3 Simple Steps to Speed Up Your Website

January 14, 2011 - Last Modified: January 14, 2011 by Jeremy L. Knauff

Speed Up Your Website

When you first started your website, you were probably eager to learn and try everything you could to squeeze a little bit more from it. Like most of us, I’ll bet you scoured the popular forums and blogs to learn the newest SEO tactics, tested different design features and headlines to improve your conversions, and even tweaked your code to speed up your website.

That may have been just a few months ago, or even a few years ago. But after working as hard as you have, it’s easy to get trapped in a rut. It’s easy to say “What I’m doing is enough.”

And it might be. You could be perfectly satisfied with how your website is performing. I doubt it though, otherwise you’d be doing something else instead of reading this.

Why is it Important for Your Website to Load Quickly?

Common sense, along with numerous experiments tell us that visitors are more likely to view more pages on a website that loads quickly. If that wasn’t enough motivation, Google recently announced that they have included load speed into their ranking algorithm, so we know the speed of your website is important. But aside from stripping the images from our website, what can we do about it?

What if you could make a few simple changes to your website that would help it load faster, rank better and keep visitors around longer? Would that be worth at least the time it takes you to read this article?

If so, keep reading, because I’m going to show you 3 simple steps anyone can take that will do exactly that. And the best part is it should take less time than watching the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy!

Step 1: Use Sprites

Let me set the record straight – I have nothing against Mountain Dew. What I’m talking about here is using a single image positioned with CSS to reduce your http requests. This can dramatically improve the speed of your website, especially if you have a lot of images.

Sprites aren’t some new “bleeding-edge” technology, in fact, they’ve been around for decades and are used by some of the Internet giants, like Google, Yahoo and AOL to name just a few.. Read up on how to implement sprites.

Step 2: Compress and Combine Your CSS files

This step will take literally 60 seconds or less, and is well worth the effort.

Depending how efficient or sloppy your CSS is coded, a CSS compressor can reduce the file size by anywhere from 10-35% or more. This may not seem like much when you consider that the average uncompressed size is about 47kb, but remember – your CSS file is loaded on every single page so the savings add up! Plus, you’ll see an even greater improvement if you combine multiple CSS files into one.

Step 3: Compress and Combine Your JavaScript files

Most of us have anywhere from a few to a half dozen or so JavaScript files on our websites. Some are for mundane tasks like validating forms, while others, do something special to make our site stand out from our competitors, but like images, each one requires a separate http request which slows down our site. We can solve that problem by simply combining all of our JavaScript files into a single file and compressing it.

What other ways you follow to speed up your site?

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Filed Under: Design

About Jeremy L. Knauff

Follow @wildfiremg

Jeremy L. Knauff is the Creative Director of Wildfire Marketing Group, a firm that specializes in web design and Internet marketing.

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{ 43 Responses }

  1. Raj says:
    My website uses Wordpress so other than compressing CSS and JS files, I use a minimum amount of plugins.
  2. Udegbunam Chukwudi says:
    I'm not the lazy type when it comes to getting messy with wordpress codes but implementing sprites on my site has been one task that I have constantly failed @ repeatedly. So sticking to W3TC to keep my site as fast as possible ;-)
  3. Steve says:
    Total Cache W3 is the best Wordpress plugin ever to improve the load time of your site. It handles the two types of compression that you mention here in addition to caching database calls, html files and providing for CD Networks.
  4. Diana Eftaiha says:
    i hear you regarding the 3rd and 2nd point but the problem is, when you create a blog it comes with its own JS and css files. and then you start installing plugins and everyone comes with it own files as well. so unless im willing to go through the scripts and combine everything that goes well together manually, its really hard to do. do you have any suggestions or thoughts regarding this?
  5. AJ Clarke says:
    These are some nice tips, but I think most people will use already made themes - so the best way to speed up their blogs is to test multiple WordPress themes and see which one loads fastest - there are many tools (do a google search) that will tell you how fast your site is loading. So basically, if you are using a platform like WordPress, look for the most simplest theme out there. Oh yea, and social media is going to slow you down a lot - tweet this and share that buttons are nice, but if your concern is speed, you may have to say bye to them.
  6. James King says:
    Other ways to speed up your site is to: 1) Compress your image file size 2) Use the WP-cache plugin 3) Avoid Flash 4) Link to CSS files 5) Use fast web hosting The speed of your web hosting provider can make a difference. Using shared hosting can cause your website speed to be slow.
  7. Kevin says:
    If I come to a blog or a website and it loads fairly slow, my attention span just went from a 10 to a 5. It's a major turn off for me If I encounter something like that. I might stay but that means you have what I'm looking for. As far as plugins I use WP Super Cache to speed up my blog but I hear a lot about W3 Total Cache. I might give it a try :)
  8. Dean Saliba says:
    You can also speed up the blog by reducing the number of plugins you use and reducing the amount of images you have that load up with the blog.
  9. Lennart Heleander says:
    Hi Jeremy, Yes, it’s correct, Google has included the load speed into their ranking algorithm, it is only one of their over 100 algorithm they control on your website, but it is important to work with the load speed. It was 3 good tips you come up with in this article and I can only recommend everyone to use them.
  10. Rose says:
    Thanks for providing this useful instructions. Newby like me doesn't even know the effects of slow loading in our blogs but it's part of the exercises to become a full time blogger. Thanks for providing this tips. Hope to learn more from you.
  11. Tantan says:
    Loading speed is very important. I'm facing loading time issue so I’m always looking to improve wherever I can. The very important thing is optimize the loading time from the beginning we create a blog/website, it useful to reduce any potential problems or conflicts in the middle of the road.
  12. Vee says:
    I haven't seen barely anything mentioned about flash. Yes, the indexing or crawling problem is not what it used to be but many mobile phone users cannot view flash correctly so that presents a whole other problem. The obvious is that it can slow a website down tremendously if not done correctly. I visit a lot of photography sites and my number one gripe is that even on a very fast cable connection, it can still take a full minute (or more) for heavily flash based sites to load. I end up leaving...I am sure the design was beautiful but what's the point if users don't stick around to actually see it?
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      Flash wasn't mentioned because it's not useful for speeding up a site.
  13. Icechen1 says:
    I tried using some WP plugins to minify/combine my CSS and Javascript, but the end result always breaks some of my theme functionality, oh well.
  14. Alex says:
    Great tips, Jeremy! I didn't see you mentioning, but there is a service that sprites the images automatically (and I think it even gives you a .css file that helps with the background positioning.) Like you mentioned, decreasing http requests can be one of the fastest way to increase your loading speed. Also, using a cdn network (so that you have more parallel downloads) can also improve your loading speed!
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      Yes, there are a few different tools available, but I've always done it manually because how I organize the sprite depends on how the various images are going to be used. It's a trial and error type of thing, and a little extra planning before you begin can save you a lot of work in the long run.
  15. Andreas says:
    A good idea is to remove unneccessary images or cut images down into several small pieces so that the small image pieces load much faster than a big sized image.
    • Icechen1 says:
      Try using services like Smush.it to strip unnecessary data from the image file :P
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      linknami, splitting images into smaller pieces will actually slow your site down because of multiple http requests.
  16. Tuan says:
    I tried to use sprites before but I can't see the difference after that. I think the most effective way to speed up Wordpress blog is using Cache plugin and installing simple themes.
  17. Isabel Rodrigues - Pro Blogger Journey says:
    Fast loading is so very crucial. Many a times you can lose a visitor if your sites loads slowly.
  18. Kharim says:
    Another great thing is to use cache. W3 Total Cache is the way to go :)
  19. Kunal says:
    Fast loading sites are important. But if you have webpages/blogs which have background and lots of images nothing can help you much. Though this tricks can reduce the load time some how.
  20. Dr Natura says:
    Some other smart ways to speed up the site: 1) Compress images 2) split up long pages into several small page 3) use a 3rd party web service to load images, videos, etc.
    • Karan Labra says:
      Don't you think using 3rd party Web services would increase the loading time as then there would be more external requests from your page and if the external site is down then you'll not be able to provide your content.
  21. Pumama says:
    Basic tips but useful! I recommend use W3 Total Cache Plugin. This plugin optimizes your blog and help it run faster
  22. Dennis Edell says:
    This is my first learning of sprites; the heads up is greatly appreciated. :)
  23. Devesh says:
    Nice Post. Some solid tips jermy. You can also use WP Smush it and w3 total cache plugins to improve the blog speed. Anyways, Thanks for sharing.
  24. TJ McDowell says:
    I watched this video a while back, and it does a pretty good job explaining some basic tricks for speeding up your site: http://videos.webpronews.com/2010/05/07/how-to-increase-your-sites-performance/
  25. Tom says:
    Some great tips, but unless you know what you are doing I wouldn't recommend doing these things - because you could totally stuff up your coding and design.
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      Learning how to use sprites takes about 15 minutes, and compressing your CSS/js can not screw up your coding/design in any way.
  26. Harsh Agrawal says:
    I have been using Sprites and compressed CSS... Though 2 more simple mechanism which can help speed up anyone blog are: Use WordPress blog caching If on VPS, use server level caching Also use image compression service like smush.it
  27. Mani Viswanathan says:
    Minifying Javascripts is the important, as they tend to take up a lot of space. I would not recommend a CSS Compression unless you don't tweak your design often.
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      Mani, your comment gave me a great idea - we're going to add a CSS decompressor tool too so that it's easy to edit your CSS after it's been compressed.
    • Karan Labra says:
      I tried it on my site, and I got some layout errors. I would too not recommend this.
      • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
        If you had layout errors, there was something wrong with your CSS. Compressing it simply removes unneeded white space.
        • Karan Labra says:
          I think, I should give it a try again!
  28. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Jeremy, Practical tips here. My load time has been solid but I'm always looking to improve wherever I can. Thanks for sharing your insight. RB
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      You're welcome! :)
  29. Val says:
    You forgot #0: Keep It Simple, Seriously! :-) One can avoid having to compress and optimize those large CSS and JavaScript files by having a more simple page layout in the first place. This is my favorite technique. Anyway, your 3 methods are still useful when the design has to be more complex. When considering a new WordPress plugin, for example, I pay attention to the use of sprites and such. I also test if there is any noticeable speed penalty caused by the new plugin. I had to drop a few of them largely for this reason.
    • Jeremy L. Knauff says:
      Simplicity definitely helps, but it's not always an option. Especially when you're doing work for clients instead of yourself. You hit the nail on the head re: WP plugins. Most are bloated and poorly coded.
  30. Ben Lang says:
    Solid tips, I'm always trying new things. I seem to have trouble with everything except for the cache, nothing ever seems to help. Thanks!

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