At InMotion Hosting we are a web hosting company that is obsessed with hosting speeds. We are dedicated to helping you succeed and grow your business and website with the fastest web hosting speeds in the industry. Since we are experts in fast web hosting we have put together a few tips to consider for making your web applications run even faster.
1. Reduce the number of HTTP requests and redirects.
Minimizing the number DNS or domain name system lookups is critical for improving front end performance. When your visitors type in your website URL into the browser window, your browser takes your website address (URL) and performs a lookup to find the mapped IP address in the DNS.
It takes around 22-120 milliseconds for the browser to complete a DNS lookup and receive the response back from the DNS resolver. While this is an extremely short amount of time for the DNS to be resolved, multiple requests to your server location or website address begin to multiply. With multiple visitors loading the website each time they visit will extend your load time. The result – the more visitors the slower your website page speed loads. Multiply this with every single asset that you want or need to load and it further compounds the issue of load speed and time. Your high traffic website response time is now slow for your new and returning visitors.
You can resolve the slow load issues quickly with the help of a content delivery network (CDN). Content Delivery Networks, like Cloudflare or Akamai, are as popular as they are crucial for performance gains and hosting speeds. If your app only has to resolve a single hostname to discover and load all of your assets, your visitors will experience the fastest web hosting as a result.
2. Reduce the number of images your site needs for the initial page load.
Any images that are not placed on your CDN will need to be compressed so your files are smaller and more lightweight for better response times. You can use free and paid encoders including MozJPEG, Webp, Svgo, and many more for lossless or lossy image compression.
Once you have compressed the images make sure to add the “image source set” tag or “picture element” tag to your images in the code of your website. These tags ensure the use of different pixel densities based on different device characteristics such as a mobile phone or tablet. If you are using WordPress you can use several plugins.
If you use the “picture element” tag, also make sure that you use an image tag as well in case the picture element isn’t fully supported by certain browsers.
3. Prioritize the critical rendering path.
The render tree is composed of the DOM tree and CSSOM tree. Upon page load, after traversing the DOM the CSSOM styles that go with associated nodes are compiled together to create the render tree. Prioritizing only those HTML elements and their associated styles for the initial page load is important to maintaining an optimal front end-user experience. You hear this referred to often with the misnomer of “prioritizing above-the-fold”. This practice has its roots in print media. After all, in print prioritizing only what would be seen first is critical. However, with web pages, the term “above the fold” became the terminology that was associated with the website information seen before the screen usable space ended.
Keep in mind that websites are fluid and responsive by nature and you should consider all devices and device orientations to ensure layouts promote optimal user experience on your website.
