Co-Founder Taliferro
Introduction
When we decided to redesign our website, we thought improving performance was an excellent opportunity. We had been looking at Google Chrome's Lighthouse tool for a while and noticed some areas where we were falling short. We used the tool as an initial baseline for what we wanted to achieve with the project. Our goal was to increase performance so that our site would load faster - meaning more users could access our content. We used our website as a use case. Why? Well, what could be better than using the actual website you're trying to optimize?
We measured before and after and found a 60% increase in performance.
Executing the plan
Once we knew our target and had a plan, it was time to execute. We used the following tools:
- Lighthouse - A tool that gives you an overall score on your site's performance from a web performance perspective. It also provides recommendations for improvement based on those scores.
- WebPagetest - This tool allows you to run tests from different locations worldwide (or even just in your neighborhood) with varying levels of a simulated load to see how other servers will perform under various conditions.
What we measured
We measured the time it took to load our website using different browsers and different network speeds on other devices. The results showed that our site was slow to load for most visitors. The chart below shows how long it took for our site to appear when we measured on an iPhone XS Max with a 1 Gbps cable connection.
What we did
- Changed most image formats to webp
- Added missing accessibility
- Added missing SEO
- Got rid of unused JavaScript
- Remove unnecessary 3rd party scripts - they really slow a site down
- Preloaded images
- Removed unused images from directories
What we learned
We first learned that website performance is more important than you think. The second thing we learned is that measuring your website's performance will help you identify what you were trying to do in the first place. Your site is your storefront, and it needs to be fast and easy for your visitors to use. You may not have thought about it, but website performance is essential. If your site takes too long to load or doesn't function properly, you could lose customers and revenue.
However, there's more than one way to gauge the success of a website: speed isn't everything. You need to measure what you're trying to accomplish with your site for any improvements you make on the performance side of things (or anywhere). In our case, our goal was not just better page load times but also increased user engagement by making the experience more engaging so that people would want to return again and again.
Conclusion
In the end, our speed improvement plan was a success. We were able to make our website faster, and it helped us achieve some of our goals. But what's most important is that we learned something in the process. The next time you're trying to improve performance, don't forget about measuring what you were hoping to get out of all this work in the first place.
Tyrone Showers