You already know that slow site speed can be a killer to your conversions and bounce rates (Why Site Speed Can Kill)! You can test your site speed with free online tools like Pingdom or Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, but to stay in the fast lane you need to have a basic understanding of the different factors that affect it.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
You use it when watching a video on YouTube. You use it when you shop online. You even use it each time you scroll your Facebook page. CDNs are used on a large scale to improve page speed and to add security to ecommerce sites, media sites, and more. To keep it simple, a CDN stores copies of your content on servers in multiple locations to reduce the distance between your user and your content.
Hosting
Imagine a storm rolls through town and you are trying to call your family on your cell phone. You may not get through because everyone else is trying to call at the same time. The same is true for web service. When you are choosing a hosting provider ask about load balancing and private fibers to help weed out companies that will slow you down.
Page Caching
Servers are handling multiple requests to build a web page on your computer. As long as your page does not require authentication, page caching will allow your computer to take a ‘photocopy’ of that page. The next time you go to that page, your computer will pull up the ‘photocopy’ until the cache time period expires so that you are not building it from scratch each time (GTMetrix). Just remember that if you make changes to that page, your users will not see the changes right away unless they clear their cache.
Harnessing these factors can help keep your site cruising along, but to boost your performance further, check out our blog or contact Informatics. Our team of creative problem solvers has the expertise to analyze your site and create a customized plan to get you moving faster.
