How to Improve Website Performance: Tips and Techniques

Optimizing a website using Google PageSpeed involves implementing recommendations to enhance loading speed and web page performance, aiming to achieve a high score in the PageSpeed Insights tool provided by Google. This tool assists web developers and site owners in assessing how quickly pages load for users on various devices and connections, offering suggestions for performance improvement.

Why optimize your website?

In search engines, particularly Google, some algorithms rank websites in search results. Page loading time is a crucial factor influencing a site's position. The loading time of visible page content, including scripts, images, pop-ups, videos, and other media files, is considered. The goal of optimizing a website using Google PageSpeed is to ensure a user-friendly browsing experience through fast and smooth loading, which can contribute to audience engagement and increased conversion rates.

Methods to speed up page loading time

Optimization for Google PageSpeed includes the following steps:

• Resource minimization: reducing the size of images, styles, scripts, and other files on the page. This may involve image compression, using compressed file formats, and reducing unnecessary code;
• Caching: utilizing browser caching to store static resources, such as images, styles, and scripts, on the user's side. This helps reduce loading time in subsequent visits;
• Deferred resource loading: loading certain resources, such as JavaScript, during page processing or after loading the main content. This helps increase the speed of the initial page rendering;
• Minimizing render-blocking: avoiding the use of resources that can block page rendering, such as placing JavaScript before the closing
  < /body > tag;
• CDN Usage: employing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute static resources on servers located closer to users, improving loading speed;
• Asynchronous Loading: using asynchronous loading of resources, such as JavaScript, to prevent blocking other page elements.

Minimization and organization of page files

If there are large files on web pages, it is important to compress them. The code of CSS or JS files can have hundreds of lines, which affects the loading speed of the project. To compress voluminous files, you can use the site https://csscompressor.com or other similar resources. Analyze all files used on the page. Discard those that are not required or combine them into one. If you can't merge the files, move them to the footer. Moving down a website can be applied to components such as:

• Plugins;
• Styles;
• Pop-up windows.

Moving them to the footer will not affect their functionality, but they will not create additional loading while displaying the main content section.

Optimizing images and multimedia

To achieve website optimization, it is important to properly manage the media files on the page. Multimedia, in particular, is one of the heaviest types of elements, so it's recommended to load them after displaying the main content. Another way to enhance loading is by utilizing plugins that play audio or video only on hover or during scrolling. Additionally, you can employ JavaScript code with the SetTimeout function or apply gradual opacity for incremental loading of multimedia content. This will help improve the overall loading speed of your website.

Despite images being much lighter than videos, they also require optimization. Similar to CSS files, images can be compressed. Popular resources for image compression include:

• https://imagecompressor.com
• https://squoosh.app

However, such actions do not always lead to improved Google Page Speed scores. Therefore, it is recommended to use WEBP images. It's worth noting that this format is not supported by all browsers, so it's advisable to include multiple ‘source’ options under the ‘picture’ tag in your code. For instance, you can use both WEBP and JPEG formats. If the browser can process WEBP, it will appropriately load this format.

Fonts

No website can do without fonts. However, font libraries contain a vast number of characters, and only 15-20% of them are used during operation. So why load a bulky font library that affects page rendering speed if it's not necessary? On the website https://www.fontsquirrel.com you can generate a font by removing unused characters.

By following these simple tips, you'll be able to improve your Google Page Speed scores and reduce the time it takes to display content on your page.