How To Enhance Website Performance

Posted by Singapore Web Design Company on 4 January 2012

Tags: Website Design

As your website is a virtual embodiment of your business, the performance of your website automatically translates into the performance of your online business. In order to shine among the many online competitors, it is important to have a web design which supports and promotes superior website performance, leading to enhanced user-interface and website functionality. In order to improve website performance, the front-end performance should be the aspect which should be kept in perspective. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Flash images are some factors which affect front-end performance.

Identify large web components

Heavy files such as large images take a long time to load, and thus, decreases the performance of the website. A conscious effort should be made to eliminate such files and keep the web components under 25KB. However, if large web components are essential for the success of the website, a web designer should do whatever is possible to optimize the file or component as per requirement.

Use appropriate image format

JPEG, JPG, GIF, and PNG are some of the popular file formats for images. Optimizing the images also involves the process of saving them in proper format for better color range and gradients. PNG is one of the best image formats as it lowers the overall file size.

Compress CSS and JavaScript

In order to enhance web performance through file size reduction, one of the best strategies is to compress CSS and JavaScript documents. This can be done so through removal of unnecessary characters such as tabs, spaces, and comments, for example, from the source code. The internet has several free tools which allow users to compress CSS and JavaScript codes.

Combine CSS and JavaScript files

Combining CSS and JavaScript files drastically reduces the number of HTTP requests to the website server. For each CSS file needed to display the webpage, a single HTTP request is generated on the server. The more CSS files needed to load a single page, the more time it takes to load the page, and the less the performance of the website is. Therefore, my merging CSS or JavaScript files, the performance of the website is enhanced as less HTTP requests are sent and less time it resultantly takes to load a single webpage.

Use CSS Sprites

Another way of reducing HTTP requests is to merge all the images of the website into one single file using CSS Sprites. CSS Sprites makes it possible to effectively combine all the small images used into one big image file enabling quick webpage loading and ultimately, superior web performance.