Site speed is one of the major concerns these days, particularly for an e-commerce website. Just reducing a few seconds of your website load time will increase the conversions significantly.
Having a faster website looks good in terms of user experience and also to the Google. That is why the search engine gives a higher priority to websites that respond quickly. Think about the last time you visited a website that didn't load quick enough. You may not have even waited for it to fully load before closing it. Online users are looking for fast snappy pages that convey their information quickly. So you need to improve your site's speed to keep a steady flow of traffic coming in. And people are always in a hurry.
Here's how you can optimise your Joomla website and speed it up.
1. Compress large CSS and Javascript files
Most sites possess a large number of CSS and Javascript files, that lead to increased number of HTTP requests, that in turn slow down page loading.
To speed up your website, you can compress these files by combining your CSS and Javascript file in to a large JS file. This reduces the bandwidth and speeds up your pages. A great tool to help you with this would be JCH optimize.
2. Compress Images
Images are another reason why your website might be slow. So use images of the right size for your website. You can use image compressors like TinyJPG to compress your images. Image compressors eliminate redundant data to reduce the file size of the image. You also have offline image compressors like RIOT for .jpg files and PNG gauntlet for .png files.
3. G-Zip Compression
Usually when a browser requests a file from the server, the server serves up the original file size which might be large, and can slow down your site's speed. When G-zip is enabled, the browser requests a compressed file that the server serves up. The compressed file is a zipped version of your webpages. When the browser receives the file, it unpacks it on your PC.
Setting G-Zip is easy. All you've got do is Turn on G-zip in the Global Configuration field of the Server Tab.
Creating optimised landing pages
Home page is often the most visited landing page of any website. Make sure that it is slim and fast, keeping your visitors hooked. Avoid using too many images, graphics and fancy animations. These will definitely make page loading slower. Keep your home page rich in content (that is useful to them). The same strategy should be applied to any page on your website that has a call to action and conversions.
4. Get rid of Redundant / Unused extensions
Most Joomla websites are found having a number of redundant extensions. You'll have to check out the ones you think your site can do without. If you do have extensions that are required, but are slowing down your site, you can off-load them to lesser visited pages that don't attract too much traffic. Extensions that display slides of images, or social counters that keep track of the number of likes and tweets, are all elements that slow down your site. So they need to be placed on lesser visited pages and not on your home page.
5. Using cache extensions
Cache Extensions like Jot Cache and Cache Control can help you manage your browser's cache. They make cache management faster.They also come with powerful garbage clean that cleans out unwanted files and extensions. You can also enable different caches for each page based on the visitor's browser type.
6. Using a Good Web Host
This is a most important factor. Your server speed matters most. You might be having a well optimised Joomla website. But if your server response time is poor, then your site will be slow so as its search ranking.
If you've got a generous budget, you could consider opting for dedicated hosting which really improves your site's speed and performance. However if budget is a constraint for your business, you can go in for shared hosting from reliable sources.
7. Check your website speed
Finally, check your website's speed on Google PageSpeed or GT Matrix at regular intervals. The great thing about Google Page Speed is that it analyzes your website's performance for both desktops and mobiles. It gives you a clear report on what immediate issues require fixing, what can be improved upon and what you've done right with your website as well. Based on this you'll have a clear picture on what can be done to speed up your Joomla website.
Try these tips out on your website and let us know how they work out for you.
