Do you know the 59 Second Rule? An average person who knows nothing about your business and comes across your website will spend nearly 59 seconds on the site before leaving it. Unless, of course, you find the way to keep their attention for a longer time. In order to achieve that, people go for various practices to improve their website.
The easiest and the most efficient way would be to improve your website’s speed. This way, the first 59 seconds the visitors will spend getting acquainted with the web content, not waiting until uploading the images.
Therefore, we suggest you taking a look at the ways your website speed can be hugely improved, without impacting the content itself.
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Lazy loadingÂ
Lazy loading is probably the biggest trend in web design for 2018 that has been described by various sources including DesignContest. This is an ingenious design pattern that shows the images or videos only when they are needed. This way, the speed of your website will never suffer, no matter what visual content you have there.
How does the lazy loading work?
Lazy loading is an infinite scrolling in a way. You scroll the website up to the point where, logically, there has to be a visualization to confirm the data. Here, you see an uploaded picture or the video material that will fade away when you scroll further. This gimmick helps web pages to be responsive and to interact with users with the speed that is much more increased.
You can even make it more engaging with different kinds of navigation. For example, lazy loading will look great with a floating navigation. It is a special feature on your website that makes it different from your competitors in one more special way. It helps users to explore the website and makes this process interesting, entertaining, and engaging. Due to the fact that there are truly lots of options that distinguish the way users can navigate, its diversity has no limits.
2. Reducing server response time
To speed up your website, it is very important to know first how long the DNS (Domain Name System) lookup takes. Every time someone is typing the website’s URL, a DNS server transfers it to the IP address and signifies its location online. At the same time, a DNS lookup shows a specific DNS record.
The amount of time a DNS lookup takes is tightly connected with the speed of your DNS provider. If it is slow, it takes users more time to get to your website (because their computers cannot locate your site in a short period of time). That is why, if your DNS is slow, you might want to switch to a faster provider. This will cause no damage to your content but will help users to get to your website faster.
3. Use a simple website design
A simplicity is your best friend in terms of the website design, especially if you want your site to run fast. Using simple grids and clean design layers can bring some unexpected results. There is no denying the fact that, lately, design has been aimed at surprising people. However, brevity is still the soul of wit. That is why, smooth design solutions can bring you a double benefit. First of all, they never look kitschy or extraordinary. Second of all, it takes not so much time for them to appear on your screen. Thus, if you are looking for truly sophisticated solutions to represent your business online, a simple web design can save your day.
 4. Enable caching
We bet it is not the first time you hear about caching but do you know what it is in fact? Cache is a component of your hard- or software that includes some data elements of your website kept in temporary storages. This means, that, once you enable caching on your website, some components will be loaded without needing the HTTP requests to the server. As a result, the website will be speeded up with no extra efforts from you.
 5. Specify your image dimensions
A great idea for those who run a blog and want it to be fully optimized. Choosing the one dimension for our photo content will help you to make the website load faster. What is more, it is profitable when you think of the general look of your site. The one-size images create an unforgettable impression where all your content is separated and sorted out.
Bottom line
There are a lot of features your website’s speed depends on. However, some of those features can be improved with no significant efforts. Why not to make your website better right now?
Natalie Antiuk works for DesignContest, a marketplace that conducts web design services of the highest quality. She is keen on web design combined with its usage in launching startups and marketplaces.
