The rise of mobile phones coupled with our increasingly interconnected society has led to a “sell all the time” mentality. No longer are businesses consigned to advertising through conventional means. With the internet in our pockets, a potential sale is always around the corner. With more potential sales around every corner, business owners have to prepare for traffic as it presents itself. For the first time ever, mobile search engine requests exceeded desktop search requests in 2015. But do you know how to make your website faster on mobile? To make the most out of your business by encouraging sales, focus on crafting a professional website that loads quickly. Consumers understand that time is money, and few shoppers are willing to wait for a slow website.

Reasons to Boost Mobile Site Speed

According to research published by Statista Research Department in April 2021, there were more than 274 million mobile internet users in the United States throughout 2020. As the mobile revolution continues, savvy businesses are getting ahead of the pack by catering to this growing audience. There are plenty of reasons to consider optimizing your website speed outside of client feedback, so let’s take a look at those benefits together.

• Better Search Results – Did you know that page loading speeds can impact your website’s ranking on search engines? It’s true! Since 2017, Google has been ranking search results while including mobile loading information.
• Boost Conversion Rates – Customers don’t have time to waste while waiting for your site to load. There are too many competitors to expect today’s consumers to wait around.
• Minimize Bounce Rates – The longer your website takes to load, the likelihood of an increased bounce rate improves. For every second, your bounce rate elevates exponentially.

As a top SEO agency and website design company, we have tested many ways to speed up mobile websites ,  here are some ways to make your website faster on mobile.

How To Make Mobile Website Faster: The Basics

In today’s digitally driven world, a professional website can make all the difference in the world. Before getting into fancy graphics or delving into marketing concepts, business owners should focus on functionality by underscoring website loading time. According to research performed at UXPlanet, when a page requires more than 3 seconds to load, the probability of a client leaving the page increases by up to 32%! With each second that ticks by due to slow website performance, business owners put themselves at a disadvantage. Fortunately, there are a variety of simple steps we can take to implement quicker loading times. These are surface-level fixes that present as the first step toward complete website optimization.

• Replace Heavy Images – As images make up the bulk of your website’s loading time, make sure that you have optimized them for speed. GIF, JPEG, and PNG comprise nearly 90% of online image traffic. GIF and PNG picture formats are heavier than JPEG.
• Enable GZIP Compression – The way that your website is coded can change the loading time for your end-user. Reduce the size of any and all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files and enable GZIP compression to significantly speed up download times.
• Avoid Costly Widgets/Animations – A professional website does not need to be laden with unnecessary widgets and costly animations. Every animated effect adds to the lag that your end-user may experience as they load up your webpage. Design a sleek, optimized, and fast-loading page to optimize sales.
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – Accelerated Mobile Pages were developed by Google in 2016 to improve mobile site speed. They work by stripping web pages down to simplified HTML, allowing them to load faster. Videos, ads, animations are removed from the page, leaving behind the most important content and images. AMPs can be easily implemented on a WordPress site with the AMP WordPress plug-in. However, sites that aren’t on WordPress will require coding to implement. To understand if AMPs are right for your website, reach out to a SEO Company that specializes in AMP for help.

Minimize HTTP Requests and Simplify Your Design

Website loading times only seem to elongate the more work we put into our website. This is likely due to an overload of HTTP requests. As your website involves more and more components, including stylesheets, scripts, and imagery, more HTTP requests will need to be made. These requests stymie the loading times of your website while decreasing overall performance. There are a few more advanced ways to address HTTP requests while simplifying the design of your brand’s website.

• Address Site Elements – The more elements on your page, the longer it will take for the website to load. Limit the number of links that you put into your header bar and remove all unnecessary copy, widgets, and animations.
• Defer Loading JavaScript – Certain JavaScript elements do not need to load until the rest of the website has been introduced. With a WordPress site, you can install WP Rocket Plugin to defer JavaScript loading until the rest of the site has been populated.
• Enable Browser Caching – The elements that appear when you visit a site are stored on your hard drive, on temporary storage, or within what we call the cache. The next time you go to that website, the cache will allow the page to load quicker. Enable browser caching to allow visitors to enjoy a streamlined, quicker experience.

Select the Right Host

Developing a professional website requires a commitment to professional hosting. Avoid signing up for the cheapest server options and focus instead on reliability and optimized performance. When browsing for different hosting options, you will be able to choose between dedicated servers, VPS hosting, and shared hosting.

• Shared Hosting – The cheapest option is ideal for lower-traffic websites because resources are shared with other sites on the server.
• VPS Hosting – VPS hosting allows you to retain control over a dedicated portion of the server’s limited resources. This is a fine middle-of-the-road option.
• Dedicated Servers – A dedicated server ensures that you have as much space as needed to perform your tasks. Unfortunately, dedicated servers are more expensive and require some support for implementation.
• Cloud Hosting – see SiteGround

Optimize Your Mobile Site with Actuate Media

With more shoppers than ever on the internet, the time is right to optimize your mobile site. To help increase your mobile site speed, consider hiring a digital agency . At Actuate Media, we can help optimize your desktop and mobile site to help improve customer experience. Reach out to us today!