How Fast Load Times Without Sacrificing Design Quality?

When creating a website, it is always important to consider speed and design in web design so that the website can be very inviting. Here are simple ways to keep your site fast and visually appealing:

Make Images Load Faster

• Pick the Right Format: CAlways choose JPEG for images, PNG for images with transparency, SVG for graphics, and WebP for optimizing image size.
• Shrink Image Sizes: Web apps such as TinyPNG or ImageOptim can shrink image sizes without necessarily lowering quality. Ideally, they should be less than 100 KB to ensure a fast and efficient website load.
• Use Responsive Images: Display images of different dimensions based on the user interface being used by the user. Use the picture tag or attribute of the img tag in the form of an attribute.
• Load Images As Needed: Use on-screen preload which allows images to load only when the page is scrolled to that area.

2. Simplify Your Code

• Clean Up Your Code: Minimize the data and utilize sources such as UglifyJS and CSSNano to get rid of space, comments, and formatting.
• Combine Files: Always combine CSS or JavaScript files into several files to enable many requests, but try to limit them.

3. Use a CDN

• Speed Up Content Delivery: Opt for a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that would store and host all of your sites’ files at servers closer to your audience.
• Offload Heavy Files: Because of the relatively large file sizes, it is safe to store images, videos, and other files in the CDN.

4. Save Resources with Caching

• Let Browsers Save Files: Provide sources for caching of the browser by not making the first-time visitors download the same files each time they show up.
• Store Frequently Used Data: Again, to improve the rate of page generation you could use intermediate server caching tools such as Redis or memcached.

5. Reduce Server Requests

• Limit Plugins: Some plugins are great for adding functionality but can also add more files and requests.
• Use CSS Sprites: Use where individual images contain small sections and use CSS to show the required parts in a single file.
• Avoid Inline Styles: Avoid linking CSS or JavaScript from one file to another for it complicates the requests.

6. Write Cleaner Code

• Remove Unused Code: Try methods like PurifyCSS to remove unnecessary CSS and JavaScript.
• Load JavaScript Later: You can also use async or defer to prevent necessary scripts from intruding on critical page loading time.
• Prioritize CSS: The placement of CSS should be done in the head section for better viewing speed of the web page. Position JavaScript at the bottom.

7. Optimize Fonts

• Use Fewer Fonts: Keep all fonts to a bare minimum, use 2 or 3 different font types and between 2 and 3 font types at the most.
• Choose Web Fonts: For instance, use Google Fonts and make sure to set them to display very fast on the web.
• Host Fonts Locally: When using custom fonts, it is efficient to host them on your server for purposes of download.

8. Delay Non-Essential Resources

• Load Below-the-Fold Content Later: FWhen it comes to web design, one of the many things that should be learned is that unnecessary images and videos should not be loaded at once.
• Postpone JavaScript Execution: It is suggested to wait before running the non-critical scripts such as JavaScript until the main content of the Web page has loaded.

9. Limit Third-Party Add-Ons

• Use Fewer External Tools: Also, use fewer third-party features such as analytics or advertising scripts, as they slow your site down.
• Load External Scripts Asynchronously: To avoid damaging your website performance with scripts from third-party services, make sure that they load in a hidden manner and do not interfere with your content display.

10. Compress Files

• Shrink File Sizes: Compress other files on your server such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using Gzip or Brotli compression.

11. Make Videos Load Faster

• Use Smaller File Sizes: Shrink a video file using tools such as the HandBrake soft, but with this action all the contents should remain clear.
• Embed Videos: Never host videos on your own server, rather prefer hosting them on YouTube or Vimeo, etc.

12. Check Your Site’s Speed

• Use Testing Tools: You can use Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix and look for problems that slow your site.
• Audit Regularly: As your site grows it is important that you regularly visit it in order to address any new problems as they occur.

13. Load Important Content First

• Preload Key Resources: Make use of the rel=preload to force load important resources such as fonts, images, and other resources.
• Prefetch Upcoming Pages: Rel=prefetch involves preparing for pages or resources that a user might use next in their browsing.

By applying the above mentioned advice, you can speed up your website while keeping its design consistent.

If you’d like to learn more about how our web design services can help you create a stunning website, contact us at 046 9241535 or email hello@flowebdesign.ie.