Website Performance: Importance, Factors, and Metrics for WordPress Users

Website performance refers to how quickly a website loads on a web browser. It also defines the quality of the website’s usability, interactivity, and reliability.

Web performance is often a visitor’s first assessment of your site. If a site loads quickly, the visitor can start interacting with it sooner, improving the user experience.

A well-performing website helps communicate and establish your brand image, which ultimately benefits your project or business. It can also improve the website’s ranking on search engine results pages.

Why Is Website Performance Important?

User Experience
Visitor Retention
Conversions and Sales
Brand Image
Mobile Experience
SEO

User Experience

Users expect websites to deliver what they want as quickly as possible. According to Google, more than half of all visitors abandon websites that take more than three seconds to load. So the longer it takes for websites to load, the more likely users will leave. In other words, slow websites test visitors’ patience and create an unpleasant user experience. This makes visitors less likely to return, ultimately harming your business. In contrast, visitors will have a pleasant user experience if they can interact with websites sooner. This quick fulfillment of their expectations leads to recurrent visits.

Visitor Retention

A study shows that 79% of visitors won’t revisit a website after being dissatisfied. A way to satisfy visitors is to improve your website’s performance. A well-performing website loads quickly, providing a pleasant user experience for visitors. Such visitors are more likely to return, improving visitor retention.

Conversions and Sales

A study by Walmart shows that every one-second improvement in website loading time increases conversion by 2%. If your site visitor stays longer, they are more likely to convert. A conversion happens when a visitor takes an action that benefits your business, such as purchasing a product, filling out a registration form, or subscribing to a newsletter. Conversion furthers visitors down the marketing funnel, leading to potential sales.

Brand Image

Your web performance helps establish your brand image. A well-performing website will leave a good impression on visitors, improving your brand reputation. Visitors may question your business’s legitimacy if the site loads very slowly. It may also suggest that your business is unreliable and incompetent. This can damage your brand image, turn potential customers away, and ultimately harm your business. Meanwhile, a well-received brand image helps strengthen your online presence. It is vital to keep you competitive in the online market.

Mobile Experience

A study shows that 92.1% of users access the internet using their mobile devices. This makes developing a mobile-friendly website essential for any site owner. Making a mobile-friendly website isn’t only adjusting the website’s layout for mobile use. You must also consider how fast mobile devices load your website. Due to less powerful hardware, mobile devices load average web pages nearly 90% slower than desktop computers. Enhance your website for mobile use to ensure it performs well across all devices.

SEO

Your website’s performance affects search engine optimization (SEO) because loading speed is a Google ranking factor. If your website loads quickly, it can rank higher on Google. If you have a slow website, visitors may leave your site immediately. This increases the bounce rate and lowers dwell time, indirectly impacting your site’s ranking on different search engines. Struggling with your website performance? It might be time to consider switching to a new web host. Exploring your options could reveal that migration is easier and more beneficial than you think.

What Factors Affect Website Performance?

Page Weight
Images
HTTP Requests
Browser Caching
File Compression
Render-Blocking CSS and JavaScript
Hosting
Hosting Location
Permanent Redirects
Network Conditions

Page Weight

Also known as page size, this metric refers to a website’s total file size, including its scripts, HTML codes, images, and videos. Web browsers must download all these files to display a web page correctly. A heavy site has many large-sized resource files that take longer to download. Therefore, page size directly affects your page speed. There are various ways to lower your website’s file size: Simplify the website design, Minify code files, Remove custom fonts, Reduce ads.

Images

Image files can significantly impact site performance. They are much larger in size than other files like HTTPS texts, making them slower to load. But since images are essential for many websites, removing them to improve loading speed is not viable. Thankfully, you can optimize images to create a similar effect. Here are some image optimization options: Compress your image, Keep image files to a minimum, Resize images, Replace images with CSS sprites.

HTTP Requests

Whenever a user visits a web page, their browser sends an HTTP request to the target server. This HTTP request specifies what the browser needs to display the web page. In return, the website’s server sends a response with the requested files. Once it delivers all the resources, the browser can display the web page fully. If the site has many files, the browser will send more requests. This extended data transfer process may lead to a slower site speed. Simplifying your site reduces the number of resources, resulting in fewer HTTP requests. Including a Keep-Alive code line on HTTP headers also makes data transmission more efficient. Moreover, avoid using elements from third-party resources, such as YouTube videos.

Browser Caching

After opening a website, browsers temporarily store its data as a cache. Website cache includes files for displaying the page, like HTML codes and images. The purpose of caching a website is to speed up load time upon revisits. Since web browsers store cache locally, they don’t have to re-fetch site resources from the servers. Depending on your web hosting provider, the steps to enable cache may differ. Usually, you can activate it through the web hosting control panel. Alternatively, activate caching by editing the .htaccess file. For WordPress websites, use plugins such as W3 Total Cache and LiteSpeed.

File Compression

Transferring smaller website files is quicker as they require less bandwidth. Therefore, compressing large files helps improve page speed. Compression lets servers shrink site files before sending them to web browsers. Compressed files can be up to 70% smaller than normal ones, allowing web browsers to load them more quickly. To enable compression, use tools like GNU Gzip.

Render-Blocking CSS and JavaScript

Whenever a web browser loads a site, it will prioritize CSS and JavaScript and pause HTML parsing. These codes will load before the essential elements, making the website appear slower. Render-blocking code may not be necessary for first-hand user experience. Therefore, developers usually delay or eliminate unnecessary CSS and JavaScript codes. For WordPress websites, remove unused plugins and themes to fix this issue.

Hosting

Choosing the right web hosting provider is crucial for your site’s performance. An unreliable hosting service may slow down your site or hurt your website uptime. Before subscribing, consider the host server’s hardware to ensure its reliability. Look for a hosting service with solid-state drives (SSDs), high-capacity random access memory (RAM), and high bandwidth connection. You should also pick a hosting service that matches your needs. For a high-traffic website, avoid shared hosting and opt for cloud web server or VPS instead.

Hosting Location

Your website is stored on a server in a specific location. To display the website, the host server will send the resources to browsers around the globe via physical undersea internet cables. The further away from the server, the longer the path for the data to travel. Your website resources will take longer to send and load, resulting in a slower loading speed. One solution is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service, such as Cloudflare. A CDN is a group of servers spread globally that store a copy of your site files.

Permanent Redirects

A permanent redirect transfers a user from the site they access to another. Its purpose is to ensure visitors land on the newer website instead of the unused, old one. When accessing a website with a permanent redirect, the browser will send the same request twice. It will load the original site first and redo the process for the correct site. Permanent redirects cause an additional transmission between the server and web browser. This costs extra time, which may harm your web performance.

Network Conditions

Among other factors, network condition is one of the most fundamental. Errors with the network can occur on the client or server side. If the network is unstable, the communication between the servers and visitors’ web browsers stalls. This can slow down your page even if it’s well-optimized.

Website Performance Metrics

Page Load Time
Time to First Byte
Time to Start Render
Time to Title
DNS Lookup Speed
Time to Interact
Bounce Rate
Conversion Rate
Error Rate
Requests per Second

Page Load Time

Page load time refers to the time it takes for a browser to load a website fully. It is measured from when the user enters a URL or clicks a link until the page finishes loading. The ideal website page load time is under three seconds.

Time to First Byte

Time to first byte (TTFB) is the time it takes for a web browser to receive the first byte of information after sending a request. This important metric is measured in milliseconds. High TTFB means your web server is unresponsive and may be facing an issue.

Time to Start Render

Time to Start Render (TTSR) measures how long it takes for the first website element to load. This can be any element, regardless of its size and importance. Low TTSR means the visitor can quickly see the website’s content.

Time to Title

Time to Title is the time it takes for a website’s title to display on the browser tab. The longer it takes for the site title to appear, the more likely visitors will leave.

DNS Lookup Speed

Domain name system (DNS) lookup speed measures how quickly DNS servers resolve the queried domain name to the respective IP address. Your site only loads after the DNS servers give your web browser the correct IP address. The average DNS lookup speed is 20 to 120 milliseconds.

Time to Interact

Time to Interact (TTI) is the time a website takes until the user can interact with it. This is an essential metric since some websites may finish loading all contents but remain non-interactable.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that immediately leave a site without taking any action. If your website has a high bounce rate, it may be because your site is slow. However, other factors can affect bounce rates aside from slow loading speed.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the proportion of converting users to total visitors. It doesn’t directly indicate your web performance like other metrics, but it can be an indicator.

Error Rate

The error rate is the number of problematic requests relative to the total requests over a certain period. A high error rate suggests that the web server often encounters issues that prevent the site from loading properly.

Requests per Second

Requests per second (RPS) is how many requests a web server receives in a second. Requests include all interactions with the web server, such as fetching emails and database queries.

How to Monitor Site Performance

The most common way to do a website performance analysis is to test its loading speed. First, finding out how to analyze website performance helps you find problems and areas for improvement.

When monitoring performance, use tools for better insight into your site. There are various website speed test tools available with different features and prices, such as GTMetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights, and WebPageTest.

After optimizing, regularly monitor your website to ensure it performs consistently over time. Monitoring also helps anticipate potential issues, allowing you to fix them as soon as possible.

Conclusion

Website performance refers to how quickly a website loads on a browser. Optimal performance is key to a successful website that benefits your business. Visitors avoid poorly performing websites due to bad user experience. Slow page speed also damages your site’s search engine ranking and brand reputation. Optimizing your website performance is not only about making your site fast. It can also improve your business’s online presence and nurture visitors into customers. To boost your website performance, improve all affecting factors, such as page size, images, and hosting services. Additionally, understanding performance metrics lets you create a better website optimization strategy.

Website Performance FAQ

What Is a Good Website Performance?

A well-performing website loads in under three seconds. To see if your website performs well, do a speed test with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. The test result will show your website’s overall performance based on various important metrics.

What Makes a Website High Performance?

Many factors can improve your website’s performance, including light page weight, optimized images, minimal HTTP requests, and small-sized codes. Removing render-blocking CSS and JavaScript, enabling caching, and using reliable CDN can also further boost your page’s performance.

By Aris Sentika, Back-End Developer at Hostinger

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