What’s the ideal speed for a site to load a web page?

Started by CorneliaAlan, 03-19-2018, 23:24:23

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CorneliaAlanTopic starter

Hi All,

What's the ideal speed for a site to load a web page?

Thanks


SeoServicesKC

Well faster is better, but you always want your website to load under 3 seconds is a general rule of thumb that we have heard. You can speed up your website by optimizing and compressing your image file sizes, as well as by utilizing browser caching.
Owner of SEO Services KC in Kansas City, MO
SEO & Kansas City Digital Marketing Expert
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evejones

The ideal speed for a site to load a web page can vary depending on various factors, including the complexity of the page and the expectations of the users.
However, as a general guideline, a page should ideally load within 2 to 3 seconds. Research has shown that users tend to become impatient if a page takes longer than a few seconds to load, leading to higher bounce rates and lower user engagement. Therefore, it is important for websites to optimize their performance and minimize loading times to provide a smooth and efficient user experience.

It's worth noting that the ideal speed for a web page to load can also depend on the context and the device being used. Mobile users, for example, may have slower internet connections and may expect slightly longer load times. In such cases, a load time of around 5 seconds can still be considered acceptable.

However, even though there is some flexibility in load time expectations, it is important to prioritize optimizing page loading speed as much as possible. Research has shown that slower loading pages not only lead to increased user frustration and abandonment but can also impact business metrics such as conversion rates and revenue.

To achieve faster page load times, various strategies can be employed, including optimizing image sizes, reducing the number of HTTP requests, leveraging browser caching, minifying code, utilizing content delivery networks (CDNs), and prioritizing critical resources to load first. Regular performance monitoring and testing can also help identify areas for improvement and ensure ongoing optimization.

Here are some additional factors to consider when optimizing the speed of a web page:

1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): CDNs distribute your site's static files (such as images, CSS, and JavaScript) across multiple servers worldwide, reducing latency and improving load times for users in different regions.

2. Enable browser caching: By setting appropriate cache-control headers, you can instruct a user's browser to store certain static resources locally, reducing the need to fetch them from the server on subsequent visits.

3. Minify and compress files: Eliminate unnecessary characters, whitespace, and comments from your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce their file sizes. Additionally, compressing these files using techniques like Gzip can further reduce transfer size and speed up loading times.

4. Optimize images: Resize, compress, and optimize images without sacrificing too much quality. Tools such as JPEG Optimizer, TinyPNG, or ImageOptim can help reduce image file sizes significantly.

5. Utilize lazy loading: Load only the content that is initially visible to the user, and defer the loading of other elements, such as images or videos, until they are about to enter the user's viewport. This technique improves the initial page load time by prioritizing visible content.

6. Minimize HTTP requests: Reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining multiple CSS and JavaScript files into one, using CSS sprites to combine multiple images into a single file, and avoiding excessive use of external scripts.

7. Optimize code and database queries: Review and optimize your website's code and database queries to ensure efficient execution and minimize unnecessary processing and database calls.

additional tips to further optimize web page loading speed:

1. Prioritize above-the-fold content: Load the most important content that users see first before other elements on the page. This helps give the perception of a faster loading time, even if the entire page hasn't finished loading yet.

2. Eliminate render-blocking resources: Identify and minimize resources (such as JavaScript and CSS) that block the rendering of the page. Move script tags to the bottom of the HTML, use asynchronous or deferred script loading, and inline critical CSS to allow the browser to render the page quickly.

3. Use a performance-oriented web host: Choose a reliable hosting provider that is known for its fast server response times, solid infrastructure, and high uptime. A good hosting environment can significantly contribute to overall page speed.

4. Optimize server response time: Reduce the time it takes for the server to respond to a user's request. This can be achieved by optimizing database queries, using caching mechanisms like opcode caching or object caching, and employing server-side caching techniques.

5. Enable HTTP/2: Upgrade your website to use HTTP/2 protocol, which allows for faster and more efficient communication between browsers and servers, resulting in improved performance and reduced latency.

6. Minimize third-party scripts and plugins: Third-party scripts and plugins, while adding functionality, can also introduce additional HTTP requests and slow down page loading. Limit their usage to only essential ones and regularly evaluate and remove any unnecessary integrations.

7. Monitor and optimize for mobile: Given that a significant portion of web traffic comes from mobile devices, ensure your site is optimized for mobile viewing. Implement responsive design, use mobile-specific optimizations, and consider technologies like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to enhance mobile performance.

Simi

2-3 second is reasonable.
Anway, to speed up your mobile site, you should use /amp to make your site mobile-friendly. That's 2018 trend.

Ravina97

Earlier this year Google released some research during which they concluded: the average time it takes to completely load the average mobile landing page is 22 seconds. However, analysis additionally indicates 53 of individuals can leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
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Yuga

If you want a quick answer, the Google recommended page load time is under two seconds: "Two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.