Pagespeed matters

Pagespeed matters - and how! More and more studies confirm that visitors are leaving slow websites — a fact that no one should neglect, especially in today's digital era, where users' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. If you're also facing the problem that your website takes ages to fully load and you lose potential customers as a result, then you've come to the right place. In this blog post, you'll learn how to improve your page speed.

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Causes of poor website performance:

1. Uncompressed images and videos: Large image files and unoptimized videos are often the main cause of slow loading time. These not only consume more bandwidth, but also require more time to be displayed on users' screens.
2. Unnecessary scripts: Too many scripts on your site can clutter them up and slow down their performance. It is important to ensure that only the necessary scripts are activated and that they are loaded efficiently.
3. Too many animations: While animations can be visually appealing, they should be used with care. Too many animations can significantly increase load time and negatively impact the user experience.
4. Hosting on remote servers: If your website is hosted on a remote server, this can result in longer load times. It's important to choose a hosting provider that provides servers close to your target audience.

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How to fix all this:

Step 1: Analyze Performance

To analyze the performance of your website and make targeted improvements, I recommend using Google Lighthouse. This free tool rates your website in various categories, including Page Speed, Best Practices, Accessibility, SEO, and more. It provides clear insights into areas that can be optimized.

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Step 2: Compress images and videos

Optimizing images and videos is an essential step to improve page speed. A useful program for this is “Squoosh”, which allows you to convert images to the WebP format. Note that images that fill the entire screen should be no larger than 300 KB, ideally even less than 100 KB. Smaller images should be cut to the necessary size and should also be less than 100 KB. These optimizations significantly reduce loading time without significantly affecting image quality. Videos are always connected to a larger amount of data. Make sure you achieve a good balance between quality and amount of data so that you don't load more than necessary. With various programs, such as Adobe Media Encoder or Da Vinci Resolve, you can achieve better compression.

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Step 3: Use Lazy Loading

While lazy loading won't help you reduce the overall amount of data on your website, it can shorten the time it takes to “first-contentful paint.” Use lazy loading for images that only appear further down on your website.

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Step 4: Reduce unnecessary scripts

Analyze your website to identify and remove unnecessary scripts. This can significantly reduce load time and improve user experience. Make sure that the remaining scripts load efficiently to minimize delays. Google Lighthouse can also be helpful here to identify problems.

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Step 5: Limit animations

Choose animations wisely and reduce the number of animations if they're not absolutely necessary. Only animate elements that actually improve the user experience, and optimize them to minimize load time.

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Step 6: Use a strong CDN (content delivery network)

Another important aspect of improving page speed is using a content delivery network or CDN. A CDN is a network of servers spread around the world that store copies of your website content. When a user visits your website, the content is loaded from a server close to them, rather than from your main server. This reduces latency and speeds up load time significantly. It also gives you better scalability. CDNs are able to distribute traffic to your website efficiently, even when traffic is high. The good news: Webflow uses a CDN, so you don't have to worry about it if you have a Webflow page.

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conclusion

With these measures, you can help significantly improve your website's page speed and ensure that visitors don't bounce off due to slow load times. If you use Webflow, you will find it easier to achieve very good performance, as Webflow uses a CDN and provides you with tools for performance and SEO optimization.

A fast website is not only more user-friendly, but also an important factor for your ranking in search engines. Invest in optimizing your website performance to attract more visitors and convince potential customers in the long term.