A website's pagespeed is important for several reasons. Some of these will sound logical but you may never have thought about others. That for several years now there has been an increasing focus on the loading speed of websites is no secret but what the impact actually is is not yet entirely clear to some. There are actually two main factors why you should take a website's pagespeed seriously. The first factor is Google, they have started to weigh a fast loading time more and more heavily in recent years and the second factor is the actual visitors who visit your website or webshop. Tip: check your Google pagespeed here.

Visitors vs. pagespeed

Of course, anyone can think something of a website's pagespeed and Google, for example, can put a certain weight on it but Google doesn't convert personally and a visitor does (if all goes well). So isn't it important to take this into account? Yes definitely but we will come back to this later. We are now focusing on visitors. People are spoiled on the Internet by well-functioning websites in which a high pagespeed of a website is an important component. As a result, a visitor is also increasingly demanding. If a website is difficult to navigate we will look for another site. If the site is not mobile friendly then we are also gone because we are largely on the Internet via our mobile . The same goes for loading speed. If you are looking for something and you come to a website that is slow to respond, you will immediately look for another site. If your pagespeed is bad, you will lose visitors to competing websites. If your website has a good pagespeed then visitors will stay longer on your website. Of course a good pagespeed of a website is only a part of the whole but an important part. If you have a fast website but the performance is bad or the content is not to your liking, visitors will still leave.

Google vs. pagespeed

The world's largest search engine aims to serve its customer (visitors on the Internet) as well as possible. They do this by showing relevant search results. Displaying well-functioning sites high in the search results but also offering a high ranking to websites or web shops with a good pagespeed. Only a good pagespeed of a website will not give you enough credit to be visible at the top of the search results but it contributes greatly to it. By having all facets in good order, Google will reward you with a higher ranking in search results. Of course, keep in mind that these days we show more search behavior on our mobile devices. Therefore, your website must be responsive but must also take into account the loading speed on mobile devices. This is a little different than realizing a fast website on your computer.

How can you increase a website's pagespeed?

There are several reasons that contribute to optimizing the pagespeed of a website. We will briefly describe them below and also consider these as tips you can pay extra attention to.

Hosting

You may not make the link right away but hosting provides a solid foundation for the website. Good hosting ensures stability so that your website does not go offline, for example, and is powerful enough to load your pages quickly.

Code

Most of us want a beautiful website. However, this is not always the best course of action because sometimes a beautiful website misses its target and that is achieving conversions. In addition, websites are quickly stuffed full of code which all causes delays in loading time. Keep this in mind during the development process. Tip: make sure to keep the code as clean as possible.

Images

We understand that everyone wants to display the best and most beautiful images on their site, however, there is a downside to this. The sharper and more beautiful the images, the larger they are in size and the larger the files, the longer they take to load. So be sure to compress your images to a reasonable size. At least try to make sure photos are no larger than 300 kb each.

Caching

What: Cache is a kind of local storage space in your browser. This is where parts of a Web site are stored to show up faster when you revisit the site.

If you have questions about the pagespeed of your own website or are curious what improvements you can still make, please contact us.