Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights

Google’s Page speed insights is an important tool for all website owners/developers. It looks quite complicated at first sight but, as I will explain, it is well worth the effort. This guide was created to help explain the requirements to get 100% for your website.

 

Why is page speed important?

 

The speed of your website is a very important consideration for any site owner. If your site takes too long to load the user may get fed up and leave before your site is loaded. Data suggests that the average time users are willing to wait is surprisingly short. According to KissMetrics “47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.”

So one major reason for increasing your sites loading speed is improving the user experience (abbreviated as UX) of the site.

For years Google have made changes to their algorithm to ensure that UX of sites is a factor in their ranking. In 2010 Google announced that page load speed would be one of those factors, and in the same year they introduced ‘Google Page Speed Insights’ to help developers improve their websites page load speed.

What is Page Speed Insights?

 

Page Speed insights is a website speed development tool created by Google to help identify possible problems that may be slowing a site. Go to  https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and enter a websites URL and click analyse. The website then tests the site and gives it a grade out of 100 (100 being fully optimised) for both desktop and mobile rendering. It also gives fairly detailed information on where the problems exist and information on how to fix them.

Page speed insights has 10 sections or tasks that need to be completed to improve the page loading speed.

  1. Avoid landing page redirects
  2. Reduce Server Response Time
  3. Minify CSS
  4. Minify HTML
  5. Minify JavaScript
  6. Optimise Images
  7. Enable Compression
  8. Prioritize Visible content
  9. Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
  10. Leverage Browser Caching

 

Click on the sections above to get more information on how to fix each issue using our step by step guide written in plain English.

Google Page Speed Insights

Once you have completed the sections above then congratulations. You have joined a fairly unique club. The majority of website developers have not mastered this and many have got incredibly low scores indeed. Just test some of your favourite sites with the tool to see how they are doing.

Page Speed Insights

It’s surprising that so many, including professional web design companies, ignore this facet of web development despite the benefits. But their loss is most definitely our gain. If most sites aren’t taking advantage of increasing page speed then it gives you the chance to get ahead.

So I would recommend to anyone reading this to fix their sites and improve not only user experience but also website traffic and search engine optimisation.

If you are having trouble with implementing the improvements or simply don’t have the time, then please get in contact with us and get a quote. Page Speed optimisation is included in several of our website creation packages as well as many other crucial improvements.

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