There is a possibility that you may lose potential customers for every second that these users have to wait for your website to load.
Modern consumers expect everything to be available instantly and if your web server is slow to load then most likely they will go elsewhere.
That means you could lose good customers, sales, and recognition. And money if you don’t take the essential steps to enhance your page performance and load time.
As a website owner, your primary concern should be to lower the web server response time.
What is the server response time?
When you try to access a web page, click a link, or type an address into the URL bar. You are requesting the web server to access the website. And the length of time it takes for the server to react to the request is known as server response time. Or, rather in simpler words, the time it takes to begin producing the information on the page for you.
TTFBs (Time To First Byte) are used to measure response time. TTFB is the number of milliseconds that passed between your request for access and the server’s response.
Why must you consider lowering your server response time?
Of course, it goes without saying that people will leave your website. If it doesn’t load within a couple of seconds as we have already mentioned. That server response is incredibly important in deciding how fast your page loads.
The aim is for a ‘less’ response rate, a ‘high’ response rate will entail to ‘high’ bounce rate.
A high bounce rate doesn’t just indicate poor customer experience; it also indicates a poor SEO ranking.
Here are three key factors why you should consider reducing server response time:
- Improved experience for your customers
- Reduced bounce rate
- Improved SEO ranking and performance
What factors influence the website’s load speed?
The server’s capacity, the number of images, videos, and graphics on a page, third-party apps, and the visitors’ internet speed are some of the aspects that influence a website’s load speed.
If you aren’t getting the response you were hoping for, there are a few factors that you can consider when determining how to lower the initial server response time.
- Website traffic: if your website receives more visitors than it can handle, it may slow down your TTFB (Time To First Byte). Some visitors may be unable to access your website at all as a result of this.
- Resources: Websites with an excessive number of applications, plugins, pages, extensions, and graphics will take longer than websites with fewer.
- Caching: Caching aids in the quicker and more effective rendering of your information. Rather than making a new request every time, caching enables the browser to get assets from a local cache, which speeds up the process.
- Configurations: If your settings are not optimized, your visitors will have a slower response time.
- Hosting service: It is possible that your web hosting company may be the source of the problem. If the hosting plan is extremely cheap or untrustworthy, you may not be getting the most up-to-date benefits. And you could also be sharing your bandwidth with thousands of other websites.
6 Ways to reduce your server response time
1. Opt for the right hosting provider
This is the most important factor because everything else will pretty much depend on it, like, what hosting servers or plans you may require, how many resources you need, what type of response time you can expect right away, bandwidth and storage space you need for your website and similar other aspects.
Compare different hosting providers and the hosting services they offer, and choose the one that is reasonably priced, customizable, complete, and scalable as your demands grow.
2. Improve your web server
After selecting your hosting provider, you can modify the settings. For a newbie with no experience, this can be slightly complicated. However, improving things like setting a cache, employing a content delivery network, and ensuring you use HTTP/2 will make a significant difference in reducing the response time of your website.
3. Get rid of unnecessary bloat and resources
It is quite simple to load your website with useless bloatware, such as applications, programs, and plugins, that occupy space but provide little to no value. This is due to the fact that duplicate web pages, third-party applications, and JavaScript files use server resources.
Remove unnecessary items to reduce bloating. This involves deleting unnecessary plugins, eliminating non-responsive images, and slimming down your code.
4. Optimize your database
Installing optimization of databases in your Content Management System (CMS) can be a highly effective technique to boost the performance of your server.
The more content you add the larger your database will get and the slower your site will operate. Modern CMSs often provide a rather simple method for optimizing their database. WordPress, for instance, provides a number of plugins, such as WP-Optimize, that makes it simple to execute this operation.
5. Keep away from using online web fonts
Web fonts (also known as Web typography) have grown popular on newer websites, but if not correctly optimized, they can place additional pressure on your server and slow down the pace of your page displaying. This is due to the fact that web fonts simply add extra HTTP queries to external sites.
As a general guideline, utilize web fonts that are necessary and include just character sets that are used on the website if possible.
6. Remove 404 errors
Users receive 404 messages when they attempt to access a website that no longer exists. These requests continue to eat your server’s resources and may cause your server to slow down if there are too many.
To identify the presence of 404 error URLs on your website, you can use a variety of tools and plugins.
Check the quantity of traffic generated by 404 errors on your site once you’ve detected them. If the links aren’t generating any traffic, you can leave them alone. If they continue to generate some inbound traffic, you may want to implement redirects and update the link URLs for internal links.
Summing up
Your server response time is an important sign of the health of your website. The faster it responds, the higher your site will rank in search engines. Keep these recommendations in mind to improve your site’s performance and reduce response time.
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