Nielsen Norman Group: usability consulting, training & user research reports. The personal home page of Will Peavy. Make the Web Faster. Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site. The Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast.
The list includes 35 best practices divided into 7 categories. Minimize HTTP Requests tag: content 80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. One way to reduce the number of components in the page is to simplify the page's design.
Combined files are a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining all scripts into a single script, and similarly combining all CSS into a single stylesheet. CSS Sprites are the preferred method for reducing the number of image requests. Image maps combine multiple images into a single image. Inline images use the data: URL scheme to embed the image data in the actual page.
Top | discuss this rule tag: server. How to Improve Website Load Times. I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to speed. No, not the psychostimulant; I’m talking about website speed. I’m not alone, either. Google recently announced that they consider website speed when determining search engine rankings. Oh, did I mention that a slow website can literally kill your revenue stream?
Google found that moving from a 10-result page loading in 0.4 seconds to a 30-result page loading in 0.9 seconds decreased traffic and ad revenues by 20% (Linden 2006). It’s quite clear. What Determines Website Page Speed? The Yahoo! So, I’ll break down the top performance recommendations and show you you can apply them to your website. Let’s do it. 1. Translation: Limit the number of files required to display your website When someone visits your website, the corresponding files must be sent to that person’s browser. As expected, every file you use to enhance your design detracts from its performance. The key takeaway is this: eliminate everything that’s unnecessary. 2. 3. 4. What? 5. Easy! 6. 7.