‍Ways to Improve the Site Speed for Your Online Course

‍Ways to Improve the Site Speed for Your Online Course

In this tech world, everything comes down to speed. It doesn’t matter if you have the most convoluted and impressive site if it takes long hours to load. There are numerous things in life that one can do at various times, but making the first impression isn’t one of them. Similarly, a website is the first impression of your resources that promptly decides whether your website will get thousands of visitors or just a handful. So, it becomes imperative to acknowledge that you would not get a second chance when it comes to user experience. Slow website speed is one of the most exasperating things that will turn visitors off about your business

One mistake that a lot of website designers/owners often make is surmising their sites are fast enough without taking a closer look at their original performance. According to Google research, the longer it takes for a web page to load, the more people would turn one's back on that website.

A high-performance website creates an enduring impact on user experience. Fast-loading pages are incredibly important for website success as they influence so many factors like grabbing traffic to a website, keeping site visitors engaged, SEO, high return visits, higher ranks in organic search, low bounce rates and higher conversions. On the other hand, slow websites will cost you a damaged reputation and money. By minimising the page load time you can also positively influence marketing and sales processes. You’ll get higher traffic and attract more qualified leads that can be converted into customers.

However, unless you understand how this metric works — and especially, the factors that influence it — you may find it difficult to improve. So, in this article, we will give you recommendations on how to improve your website performance and page load time.

Let's get started!

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1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Our world is enormous. Despite the fact that internet speed has reformed significantly over the past few years, the physical distance between computers and servers continues to play a noteworthy role in online speed performance. This is where Content Delivery Networks come in.

One of the consequential components in how quickly your page loads is the amount of time your DNS lookup takes. A Content distribution network (CDNs), also referred to as a content delivery network, is a network of servers that are used to distribute the load of delivering content. Essentially, copies of your site are stored at multiple servers across the globe, so that users have faster and more reliable access to your site. In simple words, CDN helps your sites load faster and recognizing the nearest location of each visitor loading your site, and load the content from the nearest server. For example, when a user visits your site from India they are downloading files from the server that is closest to them. Because the bandwidth is spread across so many different servers, it reduces the load on any single server and also protects your sites from DDoS attacks and traffic spikes.

Here are some most popular CDN’s:

Cloudflare, Google Cloud CDN, Rackspace, CacheFly, Amazon CloudFront

 2. Optimize the size of images‍

We humans are visual creatures, everyone like eye-catching images. It makes everything look better, not only it grabs our attention but also spark emotions.  A lot of photos, images, graphics on your website helps to improve engagement but Unfortunately, large image files are also a resource-hog slowing down your load. Today, Images take a significant space in Internet traffic, and they often take the longest to load on a website since image files tend to be larger in size. It becomes important for you to make sure that the images are no larger than they need to be.

Therefore, one of the best ways to decrease page load time is to compress and optimize your images. This reduces the image size without compromising its quality by changing its file formats, reducing the resolution and reducing their dimensions. There are numerous tools available in the market that you can use to compress images with minimal or no loss in quality. If you’re using WordPress, you have access to plugins that can automate the entire process, and help you resize images while you’re at it.

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3. Optimize code- (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files)

When you look at what’s bring out your website to load slowly, chances are that it’s got something to do with lots of clunky Javascript files or CSS being loaded inefficiently. Over the course of creating your site and adding plugins, you can end up with a lot of excess code. These include added spaces and commas, or even unused sections of code, that can slow down the time it takes for your site to load. Most modern websites are filled with multiple CSS and JavaScript files that work simultaneously to keep web pages looking nice and working in an effective manner. Each additional line of code your site needs to load, impact website performance. In most cases, removing that code isn’t an option, since it usually enables you to add critical features to your site. But removing some of the superfluous lines of code can make these files smaller. And by lessening the code, you can dramatically increase the page speed of your website. For this what one can do is minify those scripts.

Minification is a process that involves deleting anything that a computer doesn't need in order to understand and carry out the code, including code comments, whitespace, and unnecessary semicolons. This makes CSS and JavaScript files slightly smaller so that they load faster in the browser and take up less bandwidth. Decreasing your files' sizes also makes it easier to combine them. The result is cleaner code and leaner web pages that load faster.

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4. Right Video Hosting solution

 A speedy website starts with decent hosting. The hosting provider you choose plays a substantial role in your website's management and performance. That includes page speeds. No matter how hard you strive to provide the finest user experience, if your hosting is not good, the speed of your website will suffer. One of the major mistakes people make is choosing an inexpert hosting provider in order to save some bucks. One of the most popular types of Video hosting that are used throughout the world is shared hosting, it is the most inexpensive way to get your site online.

 Cheap hosting often contributes to unpromising performance. It means pooling resources across several websites on an overloaded server (much like a bunch of clowns piling into a single car), that end up straining your page loading times. Your website will be available most of the time as it would with almost any web host, but it will load at a leisurely pace that your visitors will leave frustrated without ever converting into buyers. A web host is a service that provides server space for storing and serving website content, making it accessible on the internet and web hosting is the process of renting or owning this server space to make websites accessible to users worldwide.To start the right way, get your site hosted with a good hosting provider.

‍5. Reduce your redirects

Redirect is a way that provides us with the advantage to automatically sends our website visitors to a new location. Redirect ameliorate user experience, and can even help you in SEO if done correctly. The main issue with redirects is, it creates additional HTTP requests which negatively impact performance also, visitors have to go through one or multiple connections before they land at the new location, with every redirect, your site gets a little bit slower. Whether it's just one connection or various, your page will still take longer to load. And we all know, a slow loading time is something Google notices when ranking your website. Yes, in some cases, redirects may be indispensable, such as when you're moving to a new domain. However, eliminating extraneous redirects on your site can result in appreciably lower page loading times.

The most common types of redirects are 301 redirects and 302 redirects.

301- This status code is used when any page has been permanently moved to another location and you want to avoid visitors facing an ERROR 404 on the outdated page. Search engines will only display the new page.

302 is a temporary redirect and directs users and search engines to the desired page for a limited amount of time until it is removed.

Some of the most popular tools for handling redirects are Screaming Frog, Redirect Checker, Site-bulb.
 

6. Collaborate with Top-Rated Nearshore Development Teams

Sometimes people also collaborate with top-rated nearshore development teams. Collaborating with top-rated nearshore development companies offers numerous advantages for optimizing site speed on online educational platforms. These teams often boast a wealth of expertise and experience in web development, with a specialized focus on performance optimization. Their track record in working with diverse clients across various industries equips them with the insights and best practices necessary to address the unique challenges of online course platforms.
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Conclusion:

 Everyone likes attractive and well-designed sites. However, if that means waiting a few seconds longer for the website to load, chances are that you will lose a certain percentage of visitors. So, it doesn’t matter what you do, do not sacrifice speed for an alluring website. It is fairly possible to have both, you just need to be calm and work on your website to improve it. Also, website speed is important and something that you need to check on a regular basis. It’s not a one-time task. As and when any website grows both in content and traffic, they need to periodically check their website’s load speed and take actions where necessary to improve it.