Over 30% of real estate website visitors will leave within the first 3 seconds if the page takes too long to load. Are you tired of losing sales to your competitors because your listings take forever to load? Use this list of 11 website performance optimization strategies to improve the speed of your real estate company website to give your clients an experience that results in a closed deal every time!
1): Test website performance:
Website performance testing can be broken down into synthetic and real-user performance tests. Each has its positives and negatives, but each also provides valuable information about how well your website performs under various conditions and loads over time. Depending on the needs of your business, one or both may be useful in assessing the health of your site, so it’s essential to know the differences between them to make an informed decision on which test strategy works best for you.
If you’re experiencing slow load times or other issues with your website, don’t assume that it’s just down to low traffic or lousy service on your web host’s part. Check your site’s performance by performing some tests of your own with these steps on how to perform a website performance test and find out where the problem lies.
- Understanding of the Key Metrics
- Quality of User Experience measurement
- Overview Page Speed
- Find Specific Aspects Affecting Page Load
- Set KPIs to track
- Set up Google Analytics
- Authorized your site with Google Search Console
Website performance matters, and it matters a lot! Your website’s loading speed affects the number of customers you will get and how they perceive your business or brand. For example, if potential clients wait to see how your website loads, they might leave without even bothering to learn more about your listings.
2): Optimize images:
Images are one of the essential parts of your website, but they can also make up a considerable portion of the total size of your site.
There are several ways to optimize images to improve the speed of your website, which leads to an overall better user experience. One of the easiest ways to optimize your images is with free tools you can use online, such as TinyPNG and Compressor. In contrast, slightly more advanced image optimization plugins like EWWW Image Optimizer and WP Smush Pro offer batch compression at the push of a button.
3): Reduce the number of HTTP requests if possible:
Have you ever wondered why some websites load faster than others? The answer is simple: fewer HTTP requests. This article will show you how to reduce the number of HTTP requests by using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML to improve your website’s speed. Follow along and see how you can use these six ways to reduce the number of HTTP requests, one by one. After each item, we’ll also provide an example of how you might implement it into your site! Let’s get started.
The number of HTTP requests on a website may seem like an insignificant metric, but these requests impact how fast or slow your site loads. As the number of connections and page elements on your website grows, so does the time it takes to load the page—and reducing the number of HTTP requests can help speed up your page load times. Here are six ways to reduce the number of HTTP requests to optimize your site’s speed and performance.
Use CSS Sprites:
According to Smashing Magazine, as the HTTP request count on your website rises, so does your site’s loading time. When this happens, visitors don’t want to stick around long enough to see what you have to offer — they’ll bounce right off your site and never come back. If you’re going to keep your users around longer and keep them happy with fast load times, the best solution is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your site. It may seem like an impossible task with so many images cluttering up your code, but it can be done with CSS sprites.
Image Optimization:
HTTP requests can slow down your website, particularly if you have many high-resolution images on your pages. Optimizing these images and reducing the number of HTTP requests required to display them can significantly increase your site’s speed and performance.
Grouping CSS Files Into One File:
Reducing the number of HTTP requests can help speed up your site, improve your page load times and reduce bandwidth usage by your server. By bundling CSS files together into one file, you can reduce the number of HTTP requests required to render your site, improving performance and saving bandwidth usage.
Reduce Server Calls:
The number of HTTP requests your pages are making from the server can significantly impact how quickly those pages load and how much bandwidth they consume. If possible, you should reduce the number of HTTP requests being made from each page to improve the user experience and reduce bandwidth usage.
Combine JavaScript Files:
When you are creating an application that uses JavaScript, one way to reduce HTTP requests is to combine your JavaScript files into one or two files, depending on the size of your codebase. Even if you have only two JavaScript files now, it’s something to consider in the future as your application grows and more features are added.
Images Over Scripts:
To improve the performance of your website, it’s essential to reduce the number of HTTP requests that it makes, which will help increase loading speed and reduce lag time for users. If you can, incorporate only one image or script into your page; if not, you can still reduce HTTP requests by combining multiple images or scripts into a single file and then including that file in your webpage.
4): Minify CSS and JavaScript files:
Minifying JavaScript and CSS files can significantly improve the speed of your website, primarily if you use scripts that require downloading several megabytes of data before they begin to execute. A simple way to do this is by concatenating your JavaScript and CSS files and minifying them with a minifier, like UglifyJS or Closure Compiler. This process condenses the code and removes unnecessary spaces, comments, line breaks, and other elements that serve no functional purpose in the file.
If you’re anything like any website owner, you understand the importance of having a fast website. Google gives search engine rankings to those with quick and responsive websites, which means that slow sites will get passed over by the competition. Thankfully, there are many ways to improve your website speed without much work, including minifying CSS and JavaScript files.
5): Minimize the inclusion of external scripts:
If you own or manage a website, you know that speed can make or break the user experience. With more and more consumers browsing the web on mobile devices and accessing sites through apps rather than traditional browsers, site speed matters more. A slow-loading website can make your users lose interest in your content and leave, and it may even keep them from returning to your site.
External scripts are embedded from other domains to provide additional functionality to your websites, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Comments, AddThis, etc. These scripts are created by third-party organizations and can slow down the load time of your website, especially if you’re loading more than one script on each page. Minimizing the usage of unwanted or low-hanging scripts can help you boost the web page loading speed.
6): Don’t use redirects, if possible:
If possible, don’t use redirects because they are slow, can be confusing, and may cause some of your users to have their browser time out or crash while waiting on the redirect to load. If you absolutely must use redirects, try to make them as short as possible by ensuring they aren’t too complicated or extensive in size. Each additional server hop reduces the speed at which your users will be able to access your website, so keep that in mind when planning out your redirects.
You’ve probably heard repeatedly how crucial it is to have your website load quickly. It’s true – in fact, Nielsen reported that 40% of people would abandon your site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load! But did you know that 40% of the time, slow loading times are caused by scripts hosted on other websites? These scripts include third-party advertising tools, Google analytics, and Facebook widgets. Fortunately, you can speed up your website by minimizing external scripts and data files.
7): Use Google Fonts:
A quick and easy way to improve your site’s loading speed is to use Google Fonts as much as possible. Because Google Fonts are hosted on the same servers like Google’s search results, using them means you do not have to send requests to other servers. This results in faster load times without sacrificing visual or design appeal.
Using Google Fonts can help reduce page load times on your website and make your pages easier to read, making them more accessible to more people. If you’re an expert in web development, these tips will come easy, but it can be hard to know where to start if you’re still new to the field.
8): Set Expires Headers:
Every website owner should include expired headers on their web pages, as they help prevent the search engines from crawling and indexing your site more than once within the same month (which can hurt your rankings). If you’re unsure how to set expired headers on your site, this article will walk you through everything you need to know.
Nowadays, many blogs are getting penalized by Google or other search engines because they don’t add the Expires or Cache-Control headers to their pages. The problem is that even if search engines have cached your pages, it still takes time for the page to be re-cached when you make changes to it, and during this period, the page can have an out-of-date label on it. The solution? Just follow these four easy steps on how to add Expires headers to your blog posts and let your pages be cached properly!
- Connect to your server through your hosting panel or with an FTP client
- Navigate to public_html
- Find your. htaccess file
- Open
- Add the code snippet before the line #END WordPress
- Save the file (and re-upload it via FTP if necessary)
09): Check Your Time to First Byte (TTFB):
According to Google, the average user’s online attention span is just eight seconds, and 64% of users expect a web page to load in three seconds or less. If your site isn’t loading fast enough, you’re losing customers and leaving money on the table. That’s why it’s essential to optimize your web pages to load quickly and easily—and that starts with testing your Time To First Byte (TTFB).
One of the best ways to improve your website speed is through TTFB, which stands for Time to First Byte. It measures how quickly your server sends data to the visitor’s computer before any other content on the page loads. In other words, it measures how fast you can deliver content from your server to the client’s browser before any CSS or Javascript has loaded on the page.
TTFB measures how long it takes for a web browser to receive the first byte of data from your server, and it’s essential to getting that all-important first impression right with your customers. Fortunately, there are several factors you can tweak in order to speed up your TTFB time so that customers don’t leave before you even have the chance to capture their information or sell them on your product or service.
10): Avoid Overlinking and Code Redundancy:
Overlinking, which occurs when an internal link points to the same page more than once, has been shown to slow down websites and hinder user experience significantly. In addition, Google penalties can result from overlinked websites, so it’s essential to avoid the issue altogether by learning how to prevent overlinking. Luckily, the solution is simple if you know the problem beforehand.
According to recent studies, more than half of all internet users will completely abandon a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load, and 40% of traffic comes from links on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which means that site visitors are less likely to return to your website if they find it too slow to load, especially if they find similar information elsewhere. To keep visitors returning again and again, you need a website that loads quickly, even during peak hours when traffic increases dramatically.
Overlinking and code redundancy can negatively impact your website’s speed, affecting your search engine ranking, traffic volume, and revenue. It is best to minimize this when you can.
11): Get rid of unnecessary pages:
Website speed can make or break your business. Consumers expect websites to load quickly and easily, so visitors will leave and go to your competitors instead of waiting it out if yours takes too long. Unfortunately, most websites have many unnecessary pages that slow them down without adding any value to the site. This guide will help you get rid of these pages and improve your website speed by at least 20%.
Your website will run more smoothly with fewer unnecessary pages and files to load. This includes all the JavaScript libraries, extra CSS files, images, Flash objects, and other parts of your site that are redundant or outdated. Before you start throwing things out indiscriminately, make sure that you don’t need them—and even if you do, make sure you’re not sacrificing functionality to speed up your site’s load time. It’s also essential to ensure that any new files you add aren’t slowing down your site either!