MOBILE |
TECHNOLOGY |
What web designers can do to speed up mobile websites
28/09/2021
20mins
Susan Margret Correya
TECHNOLOGY,MOBILE
You can do just about anything on your mobile. Read a book, watch a tv show, listen to music and socialize – these are the smallest examples of the endless possibilities of mobile.
However, for all functions to work efficiently, it is essential to have a fast-loading mobile web page. When customers go over your website on their phones and see that the pages are taking time to load, they’ll soon lose interest in what you have to offer – even if that offer is pretty great. Users hate waiting and so, you need to get started on working on mobile websites that are as efficient as their desktop counterparts.
To put it simply – the “need for speed” is here to stay.
So, what can web designers do about it?
There is much that web designers can do to increase the page loading speed on the mobile apps and websites that they design. Here are some of the design techniques that can be used to improve the speed of mobile websites.
Cut down on redirects
Redirects may be useful, but they can make page loading a lot slower. Therefore, reducing the number of such redirects on a site can help to improve the speed of a page.
Make sure that you are only using redirects that are necessary to the function of the page. If you don’t need the redirect, don’t use it at all. And always be sure to never redirect to pages that no longer exist or are broken.
Lose the unnecessary plugins
Plugins are extra weight and code as far as website design is concerned. So, keep them to a minimal. Use the plugins that you absolutely need, and be sure to keep them updated. Plugins are simple to find, use and install. This convenience makes it a habit for designers to use them to make designing the page easier.
However, one grave mistake designers are usually guilty of is using multiple plugins to minimize their work, negatively impacting page loading speed.
So, instead of using plugins for simple processes, manually code what can be and use plugins only where they are necessary.
Optimize images
Image size is one of the major factors that determines the speed of websites. And websites have a lot of images. Quite often, the most downloaded data from a website would be its images.
Therefore, it’s a best practice to edit images to the right size you need and save them for the web. Compressing image sizes will help keep data downloading low as well. Having images formatted and saved properly will help keep the file size lower and improve loading speeds as well.
Choose the right host
The server that hosts your website needs to be the right fit for your requirements. A slow host will result in slow downloading and slow page loading. You have to take into consideration the files, images and videos that you will be coding into your website as well.
If your host can’t handle the storage of the data and keep the page loading speeds high, then they’re probably not the right host for you. So, make sure you invest the required time to determine the right web hosting package at a price that works for you that does the job.
To conclude
There’s a lot that web designers can do to boost and maintain coding speeds that impact how quickly your website loads on mobile. Their jobs aren’t finished at the original design and publishing of the website. They’ll have to constantly re-evaluate performance and maintain it at times to keep it at optimum speeds.
These are just some of the techniques that web designers can use to design a mobile website that functions great and at good speeds.
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