We’ve all been there. It happens when you’re about to make dinner reservations or book a flight. The page took too long to load.

This rollercoaster of emotions will show you how to relate to website performance when designing a website.

What’s website performance?

Website performance refers to the speed with which pages load and display on a user’s browser. It doesn’t matter what device it is. This affects overall interactivity and usability.

The platform and the server infrastructure are key factors in site performance. Site performance is largely determined by the platform and server infrastructure.

Tip – Kobe Digital sites load faster than ever, regardless of where you live. 

Why website performance matters

Website performance is essential for online success, regardless of your industry. Website performance is essential for online success.

Let’s explore the reasons website performance is so important and how it affects:

• User experience
• Visitor retention and bounce rate 
• Conversion rates
• Brand perception
• Mobile-first culture
• SEO

User experience

It is crucial to understand how design affects performance when building a website. This includes layout, hierarchy, and ease of use.

A website that provides an outstanding user experience will increase your chances of success.

Visitor retention and bounce rate 

Website owners have only a few seconds to make a good first impression. Website owners only have a few seconds to make a first impression on visitors.

Conversion rates

A user who had a positive experience with your website will most likely return to it again. Cloudflare says that the quicker a page loads, the more likely it is that a user will take targeted action.

A 2019 Portal study found that page-load times within five seconds are the most important factor in determining conversion rates. 4.422% can decrease conversions, even if there’s a one-second delay.

Brand perception

Your customers will appreciate the attention you pay to site performance and appearance. Customers will appreciate your attention to website performance and appearance.

Imagine this: A member of a well-known family posts an Instagram Story, in which they are wearing a sweatshirt made by your company. The merchandise page takes too long to load. Impulsive buyers such as 60% of them will bounce off a slow website or app.

They could do more damage than they cause. This could impact the perception of your brand. According to the same IBM study companies that fail to live up to Gen Zers’ high standards will lose their popularity quickly.

Mobile-first culture

An average American checks their phone 344x per week. This is one per four minutes. That’s one every four minutes.

Studies show that mobile site speeds can improve conversion rates by 8.4% compared to sites with retail prices. The test will determine if your website’s mobile-friendly.

SEO

Performance can have an impact on not only how users experience your website, but also how visitors find your site.

Google’s Web Vitals form part of Google Pages Experience. These signals are used to measure user experience and can influence how websites show up in search results pages ( SERP ).

Google doesn’t consider Core Web Vitals to rank factors.

Your company may rank higher in the SERPs for a query than your competitor.

Performance metrics

Speed and quality tests can measure site performance. Speed and quality tests are a good way to gauge site performance.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals measures speed and interactivity using three indicators:

• The Largest Contained Painting (LCP) measures the time it takes to render the largest image or block of text on a webpage.

• Cumulative layout shift measures all page changes over the lifetime of the page. Layout shifts refer to when a visible element is moved while the page loads.

• The First input delay (FID) measures the time between the moment a user interacts on a page (e.g. clicking on a link, button, or button) to the browser processing the interaction. 

Tip – Learn more about Core web Vitals, Kobe Digital site performance, and the differences between mobile and desktop scores.

Page load metrics

Google’s 2018 developer conference web performance made simple, which was held in 2018, placed a lot of emphasis on speed. Google reports that 75% of users consider speed to be the most important UX attribute.

Page Speed is the time taken for content to load on your site. There are several ways to measure page speeds, including

• Speed Index (SI), representing how quickly content displays during page load.

• FCP (First Contentful Paint) measures the time it takes for a page to load and when the contents (texts or images) are displayed on the screen.

• Time to Interactive (TTI), is the time required for a page to become fully interactive. This is the time it takes for a page to become interactive.

• Simply put, Total Blocking Tim (TBT), measures the time your website has been blocked. It blocks users from accessing your website.

• Time To First Byte (TTFB), is the time it takes for a browser to request a page to be loaded and receive the first byte from the server.

What factors influence website performance?

Let’s look at these parameters to optimize the performance of your site:

HTTP requests

HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol, is how web browsers and web servers communicate.

How few HTTP requests a site receives can have a significant impact on its performance. JavaScript, CSS files, and HTML3_ Images are just a few of the factors that can influence the HTTP request count. 

Page weight

Performance depends on the number of requests made, but also on the content being requested. A webpage that performs slowly is considered heavier

• Image size: Images have a greater impact on website performance than plain HTML files. They also take longer to load. Images can impact a website’s performance in many ways. They are heavier than plain HTML files and take longer to load. JPG images can load up to 10x faster than PNGs and are also smaller than PNGs. Browsers may delay loading media and content that is not in the original view of the user.

• It is crucial to reduce the file size. It is important to reduce the file size. They are then sent to a browser to be downloaded and received.

Web hosting

Web Hosting serves a website’s files via a browser. Depending on the size of your website, traffic, and scalability, you may need to consider hosting options that will affect your site’s performance.

Tip: Kobe Digital automatically serves your websites from multiple servers across the globe. CDNs are used to accomplish this. This allows for fast server response times, especially Time To First Byte.

Caching:

Caching is the process of saving data on the server, or via the browser so that it can later be retrieved.

A website selling thrift store finds will have your logo on every page. Kobe Digital sites use automatic caching to cache all pages.

Geographic location

It may seem that the Internet is everywhere. However, the infrastructure that allows websites to work is not only present physically but is also distributed around the world. Each HTTP request must travel through the server to reach its destination. The server must then return the information to the browser. Because the data is less far away, this is why it takes longer to send.

Web hosting providers use proxy servers to reduce the distance data must travel to respond. These servers respond quickly to browser requests.

Tip: Kobe Digital hosts all websites hosted on worldwide-distributed CDNs and data centers. It automatically activates server-side caching and saves it on our CDNs. This allows you to deliver content quickly and efficiently, no matter where you’re located.      

Browser extensions and browser plugins

Third-party extensions allow your website access to data stored on other servers. This can slow down websites. Limit add-ons to those that are essential for the user experience.

URL redirects

Website visitors and search engines can be redirected by sending an HTTP Request to a server. After the page URL is redirected, the browser sends an HTTP Request to the server. The browser then replies with a request to the URL.

As your business grows, or your online content evolves, you may have to modify the website’s flow. These posts can be combined into one post by using a topic cluster model. It is important to keep redirects as simple as possible to maximize performance.

Tip – To set redirects using Kobe Digital’s redirect manager use the Bot log reports. Go to SEO Tools in your dashboard.

Checking website performance: Best practices

Testing your website’s performance is the first step in ensuring it runs smoothly.

Before you start testing

• Pay close attention to where your data comes from. Real User Monitoring (RUM) data includes real user data and simulates network conditions and devices. Lab data is not always accurate and may not reflect the experience. For example, let’s say you want to add a gallery to your website. Before you publish any changes to your website, it is important to know if they have any effect on the performance.

• Pay attention to the cache. Lab tests can change. You should refresh each test at least three times.

• Different tests will yield different results. To understand why the results might differ, pay attention to what each test means and where it came from.