Making a mark in the online industry is becoming more and more difficult, as the speed of breakthroughs in technology force online sellers to adopt, and adopt quickly, if they are to maintain their lead. If you are a company whose bulk of your sales comes from website referrals or a service provider whose chief means of contact is through online interaction with potential clients, then your website’s importance can’t be overlooked.

Websites need to stay updated with the latest scripts, and compatibility with the most popular browsers around is a must. With the advent of smartphones and PDAs, web designers have paid a lot of attention too on how the website would look when viewed through these devices. A website’s loading speed, optimization, scripting and compatibility is very crucial in retaining a potential client’s interest. For one, we have all experienced, in one time or another, visiting sites that have a long reload time, and often than not, we just click the “x” button on that tab and proceed to another site. We don’t want your potential clients to that, do we?

Now, as an online seller/ service provider, you are naturally inclined to ask on how to make your website faster. Read on:

1. Size Matters. If someone said that it doesn’t, that person is lying. Well, as far as websites are concerned. Optimizing the size of your HTML, stylesheets, javascripts and images should be your priority. You could also use third-party applications to help you identify files for optimization (use PageSpeed or similar tools).
2. Website Surfing is Racing Too. In any race, you need to usually finish at the top 3 in order to qualify to the next event. The same is true for online selling. It is a race too. Make sure your hosting is fast. While you may think that opting for some cheap hosting packages will give you savings, think twice, for you may end up paying more in lost sales.
3. Optimum Sotware. The key word here is “optimum” – the word that we always hear when we need to balance costs and benefits in business. By optimizing your software, we mean enabling the “cache” function of common products like WordPress, Drupal, Magento, or any other content management or e-commerce software you may be using. This process may require some plugins though, and websites with custom software may also require caching for database queries, content blocks and complete pages.
4. Another Speedracer. You thought we’re done with speed? Not quite. It is known that larger database mean more required resources to process queries. And that speeding up the database is often a complex process. Usually, you need to invest a larger amount of time, money and effort in this one. Process may require database server configuration adjustments, data structure changes and proper use of indexes.
5. Size Matters, Again. Well, we’ve told you at the beginning, and we’ll tell you again here. While quick fact One is more or less addressed to personal computers, the same adage is not only applicable but a must for successful mobile interfaces. Older iPhones for example have a maximum cache components size of 25KB. If you want to stick with the mobile market, keep your files under 25KB. Contrary to popular beliefs, the smaller it is, the better (for websites that is).

Making websites fast may be a complex task, but do it, and you and your business would be rewarded greatly. Identify a few bottlenecks, eliminate unnecessary things, and keep in mind the quick facts we’ve given, and we ensure you’ll experience a drastically improved page loading time.