Making your mobile website load faster is in your best interest. Many mobile users surf the web on the go. They have little or no patience for websites that take ages to load. If you want to keep their attention to generate leads and drive conversions, you must level-up your mobile site’s speed.
If your website doesn’t load quickly, visitors will bounce off your website. A website that is optimized for speed doesn’t only enhance the user experience but also boosts your ranking on search engine results.
How can you make sure your mobile website loads faster? Consider a few tactics you could use to improve its speed.
Use Compressed Images
When the images on your website are large, this can slow down your page loading speed, which ends up impacting your website’s ranking as well. To make your website load faster, use compressed images instead. There are several websites that allow you to compress images online.
Using fewer images on your website’s homepage allows it to load faster. It is even much better to have no images unless you want to include essential graphics or a logo.
Simplify your Website’s Design
By keeping the design of your website simple, you reduce the amount of code, that makes your website load faster. A simple, clutter-free website and homepage is also appealing. Designing your website with the bare essentials makes the biggest impact.
To get started, you can cut down unnecessary navigational links. You can also choose to use universal icons and symbols for navigational buttons and dropdown menus.
Reduce Redirects
Redirects send users from one URL to another; this is distracting and takes the server time to retrieve. Redirects do not only have a notable impact on your mobile site’s speed but also on your website’s safety.
Cybercriminals can easily use these URL redirections to attack and take advantage of the user’s trust. They can redirect traffic to a malicious web page using a URL embedded in the website’s code. Reducing redirects keeps your visitor’s attention and protects your website.
Keep Custom Fonts to a Minimum
Custom fonts look great, but they use a lot of JavaScript or CSS, which can slow down your website. Several websites use custom fonts. These fonts are usually hundreds of kilobytes and impact your site’s loading speed. If possible, avoid using them. If your website relies heavily on them, you can restrict their use to headings or other important areas of your website.
Cut the Signup Steps
If you have features on your website that allow users to sign up for an offer, reduce the steps it takes to sign up. When you reduce the steps to sign up, your website uses less code, which makes your page lighter and faster.
Activate Google AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are open-source pages designed by Google to allow a website to load faster on mobile devices. AMP strips pages down to their most essential parts and stores a cached version on Google’s servers, which allows them to deliver content faster. When you activate Google’s AMP, your website will look great and load faster, regardless of which device or distribution platform it’s on.
Remove Unnecessary Plugins
Website plugins extend the functionality of your website. A plugin can be used to change the visual elements of your site or add extra information or content. However, not all plugins are created equal. If you have too many plugins, your website can slow down.
Reviewing the amount of plugins you have installed and removing unnecessary ones is a smart move. In some instances, some tools might have overlapping functions and features and are no longer relevant. You can disable or delete any plugins you don’t use on your WordPress site. Before you do that, you can test them individually.
Website speed has a significant impact on the overall user experience. Every extra second your web page takes to load increases the chances visitors will leave your site. Losing visitors means losing clients, and you can’t afford to lose leads as a business. Including the strategies above can make your mobile website much more responsive and improve its speed!
David Messiha | Contributing Writer
