Size may not matter but speed definitely does when it comes to your website. A few seconds in loading time could increase bounce rate (number of people leaving at the same page they entered your website without navigating to other pages) substantially which could mean losses in conversions.
At Creatix we understand that when building a brand new website we are expected to deliver one that is secure, functional and fast. That’s why we put in place standard protocol in all of our web design and development project to make sure your new website will be lightning fast.
Here are a couple of things that we do:
Limited use of plugins, widgets and media
As our go-to CMS, WordPress offers a great and intuitive backend as well as a versatile developmental environment. One of the features of building a WordPress website is the use of Plugins. WordPress plugins are ‘packaged’ codes that can be added to a WordPress website to perform a particular function. Some of the most well-known and widely used plugins include WooCommerce (for handling all things e-commerce and product); Yoast (for handling SEO related features and settings). While these plugins are useful and easy to install, too many of them could have a negative impact to the website with one of them being an increase in load time as a result of these additional codes in plugins. At Creatix we always try to minimise the use of plugins to ensure the construction of the site is more lean and tidy so that the website load time will not be increased unnecessarily.
Code optimisation
For all web design and development project, our codes are also written with speed optimisation in mind. This may bore you but the code that we write follow a strict guideline that includes: minimising page size, eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS; reduce HTTP requests; selective load; using expires headers; using Keep Alive headers to avoid repeat requests; reduce DNS lookups, etc. As a result of these measures and web developing guidelines, the website Creatix builds are much more durable, structured and most importantly,, fast.
Optimise image
Images are one of the main culprits when it comes to page loading and most web masters do not have minimising image file sizes in mind while uploading them to their website. In Creatix we make sure image optimisation measure is in place at the very beginning stage when building the website so that all future images uploaded will automatically be optimised to reduce unnecessary loading time.
Caching
Every time you visit a website, you are requesting the files from the website to be loaded so that you can see them in your browser. This process of file requesting is basically what creates loading time for a website. A cache is like a little file that is stored in your browser to ‘remember’ what a website looks like so that the next time you visit it, rather than requesting the full files from the website again, your browser can simply load this saved version which makes loading time for a visitor much faster. In all of the websites Creatix builds, we implement caching to make the website load and deliver better and faster. Cached website also ranks better in SEO.
High speed cloud hosting
The importance of hosting cannot be overstated when it comes to determining how fast (or slow) a website loads. To put it simply, if given the option, go for: VPS or dedicated hosting (rather than shared hosting); SSD storage (rather than HDD); Data centre in the location where your targeted audience is (rather than data centre elsewhere).