Page loading speed is an essential element among various factors of a website that should never be overlooked. You may have heard that website visitors start to leave a page if the loading speed exceeds a certain threshold. According to Google research, 1) if the page loading speed exceeds 3 seconds, the bounce rate increases by 32%. And if it exceeds 10 seconds, the bounce rate increases by up to 123%.
As network technology and computing hardware performance continue to improve, website visitors become more accustomed to shorter loading times. As time goes on and technology continues to advance even further, it is possible that the bounce rate at the 3-second mark may increase by more than 32%, and users may even abandon a site completely if there is no response within one second. This is because one second in the future in terms of networking may have a completely different meaning than one second in the past. We don't even need to mention the theory of relativity; we already know this from experience. Before 2000, when we used telephone lines to access the internet, it took a minute just to connect to the internet, but we didn't perceive it as being slow at the time.
Although it can be acknowledged that people's perception, or in other words, their patience for page loading times, has changed, fast page loading speeds are still crucial for a website's role in business from a data perspective. This is because speed has been introduced as an important variable for page ranking by the giant search engine, Google.
The importance of Page Loading Speed as a factor started to be recognized as early as April 9, 2010, when Google published a document2) stating that they consider Page Speed as an important factor because fast speed provides a positive User Experience and reduces Operating Cost. Positive User Experience refers to the emotions that users feel, and fast speed can create smart emotions that are associated with trust. On the other hand, while Google does not mention Operating Cost in a detailed manner, reducing Operating Cost means the following:
1. Google Search Engine의 Operating Cost: Google's search engine crawler bot downloads each site it visits. From Google's perspective, it needs to minimize the time it spends on each site since it needs to visit hundreds of thousands of sites. If a page is slow to load due to its size or any other reason, it takes longer to download the page's information. This means that the crawler bot has to spend more time collecting the page's information, and more time means more resources and cost consumption. Therefore, fast-loading pages are considered an important factor since they help reduce Google's search engine operating costs.
2. 사용자의 Computing Resource: A slow page loading time means that more of the user's computing resources are consumed. The longer it takes, the more resources such as electricity and network resources the user has to use. Even with just a few seconds' difference, if we consider a larger population, such as 100 million users taking one second longer to view a specific page, it would take an additional 100 million seconds, meaning that 100 million seconds of electricity would be consumed. Converting 100 million seconds into hours is approximately 27,000 hours, and into days is approximately 1,100 days. With just a one-second difference, 100 million users would consume an extra three years' worth of electricity.
3. User Time Resource: Although it may only be one second, users are consuming one more precious second of their lives. If these countless seconds of so many people can be used for the benefit of humanity, it can lead to work that increases the public good. Therefore, it can also be considered a good thing.
2. How to increase Page Speed.
1. You should minimize page size:
When we access a web page, our web browser downloads the HTML code, including JavaScript code, from the server where the website is hosted through the network. Therefore, if the size of the downloaded data is smaller, the total amount of data transmitted through the network will be reduced. This can be one way to reduce page loading speed.
There are several ways to reduce the size of a page, including reducing the size of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and image files. The size of HTML can be minimized by using an HTML minifier. When writing HTML, we often use a lot of empty space for readability. html-minifier removes these empty spaces and reduces the size of the file. When writing HTML, we often use a lot of empty space for readability. HTML minifier removes these empty spaces and reduces the size of the file.
For JavaScript, UglifyJS can be used to compress JavaScript files. UglifyJS not only removes empty spaces but also replaces long variable names and commands with shorter words, making it difficult to read the code. Since anyone can access JavaScript files when visiting a website, using UglifyJS can make code analysis difficult (although it is not a complete security measure, so sensitive information should not be included in JavaScript)
The same is true for image size. However, it is natural to want to use high-quality images for the beauty of the website and for users. Choosing between using high-quality or small-sized images is an essential consideration when designing a website. Fortunately, web image technology has been working on this issue and as a result, we now have access to the latest web image technology called webp. Webp is a new image format that can reduce the size of an image by more than 50% while maintaining the same quality. This means that we can deliver the same quality image to users twice as fast.
2. Architecture modification:
For many websites that are used only for marketing purposes and do not require data management (unless it is a website that needs to manage data), it is recommended to use only static files. Nowadays, many CMS tools like WordPress are widely used, which convert HTML code through the WordPress engine to send it to users. Therefore, it can take time to convert, which can slow down page loading speed. Additionally, CMS tools come with unnecessary features to meet multiple requirements, and these features consume additional computing resources on the server, which can further slow down page conversion speed when computing resources are insufficient. If you are considering using a CMS tool, it is essential to delete unused plug-ins to use a compact engine. Otherwise, you need to consider implementing a website without using CMS tools, which is the approach used by SEVENWHALE.
