How do you improve your website loading speed? Large images and resource-heavy functions on the site are two of the largest culprits.

Thankfully, they’re also the easiest to resolve.

1) Optimize Images

How many images are on your site? How large are those files?

The larger the files, the more time it takes to load. Photoshop and Compressed PNG/Compressed JPEG are great resources for reducing image file sizes without losing image quality.

2) Resource-Heavy Functions

Embedded YouTube videos, embedded Google Maps, reCAPTCHAs, and slideshows are notorious for causing slow loading times.

3) Caching

There are a ton of caching programs that can help reduce page load speeds by condensing JavaScript/CSS files together to load them together, help with lazy loading images, and more.

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Video Transcription

0:05
How do you optimize page load speed for
0:08
your website
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no get a good fast host
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um no that’s that’s what a lot of people
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will go to
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um
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but I found that a lot of there are some
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slow
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um hosts out there like if you’re on
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GoDaddy godaddy’s notoriously for being
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a notorious for being a slower web host
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um but but generally speaking uh there’s
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some slowness with all all hosts but if
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I’m looking at a site one of the I
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usually look at the number of images
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that are on the on the site large images
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tend to tend to take up space and
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yeah obviously the more files the larger
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the files that have to be transferred
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from the server to the computer that
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ends up just taking time so I’ll go
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check out his site and I’ll see you know
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how many large images do we have do we
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need all of them if we do need all of
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them then one of the first things we’ll
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do is we’ll we’ll actually try and
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optimize those images
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both for first actual size constraints
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so because a lot of times I think people
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will find you know they’ll pull a camera
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image that’s unoptimized as you know
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probably a couple megabytes in size and
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they’ll upload it to the slideshow or
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the header of their their website but
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that that image could be like a megabyte
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or two megabytes or six megabytes which
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is a massive image
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um I’ll try and get it you know cropped
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down to where it needs to be to fit the
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the side the space resize down and then
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optimized to try and get it under like
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200 kilobytes
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um because that can be a huge cost
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savings
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um so large images are usually the
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biggest culprit
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um secondarily
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um
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I guess we’ll go for next easiest things
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um
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ironically
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YouTube is a resource heavy
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um
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like
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functionality to have on your site so if
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you’ve got embedded YouTube videos
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Google does download a bunch of
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resources
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as a part of that so that could be like
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another almost megabyte and a bunch of
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different files that get downloaded with
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the site so usually when I see a site
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that has YouTube videos embedded on the
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homepage I try and remove those and and
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shift them over to like a a deferred
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load so that way they only load after
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the the page is loaded and only if
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someone clicks on them
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um other things like
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let’s see there’s recaptcha that’s a
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huge resource so I try and only get
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recapture on pages that have forms
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um Google Maps embedded Google Maps also
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another Google product that’s that is
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just resource intense and so it it can
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also load a ton of different resources
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so removing Google Maps
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um either shifting that over to a
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contact page or an offices page or just
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removing it all together replacing with
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a graphic and then linking to the the
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Google Maps
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um and then
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those are some of the easy ones if
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you’ve got a little more technical
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knowledge looking at JavaScript on the
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site so I know that I one of my pet
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peeves or websites is slideshows on the
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home page
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um I I think they’re kind of worthless
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I’ve seen a few studies that back that
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up but slideshows are notorious for
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having a bunch of photos or videos or
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Graphics that are all resource heavy
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plus the JavaScript to run
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the slideshow can be resource heavy
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because then you get a load a bunch of
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different JavaScript libraries to make
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that work
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um and so I like to remove those and
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then replace them with just one graphic
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with you know your hero messaging
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um so that way it’s it’s very clear
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what’s going on
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um the other things like
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gosh there’s gonna be other other
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JavaScript functionalities that
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depending on the site can take up a lot
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of resources I know there’s there’s a
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lot of like uh WordPress templates
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Squarespace all these other different
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kinds of website you know Builders out
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there
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they are built to be functionally useful
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it’s like make it easy for the average
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person to build something complex but
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with that they’re not really paying a
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ton of attention to what are the
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resources that are being loaded every
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time one of these these cool pieces of
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functionality gets put on a page
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um so I’m always really careful what
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gets added to a page and what doesn’t
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there’s there’s been times where like
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you know testimonial loaders will will
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go crazy and you know load a bunch of
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resources and I’ll just remove them
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um other times it’s like expanding
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content
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but just looking to see what kind of
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JavaScript elements are on the page
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uh past that I know like an easy thing
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if you’re on WordPress is to do
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some caching
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um you know there’s tons of different
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caching programs out there we use Auto
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auto optimize
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for however I want to say that’s Auto
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optimize kind of push together
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um but it’s great because it’ll condense
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your JavaScript files that are condensed
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your CSS files compress them all
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together load them as one file do a
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whole bunch of different things and even
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help with lazy loading images
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and that that can help improve page
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speeds as well
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so that can be a fun process
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yeah so one of one of the first things
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you mentioned was the image sizes so
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what are what are some of the tools that
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you use to reduce those image sizes oh
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I’m old school so I I use Photoshop
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um I know that’s not everybody’s uh
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disposal
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um but another one I use is there’s I
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think it’s compressed PNG compressed
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JPEG and
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dot com both of those it’s kind of like
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the same website but they have a
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different one for the different file
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types so once I’ve
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resized something within Photoshop and
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done a little bit of compression there
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I’ll upload it to compressed jpeg or
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compress PNG and that will kind of run
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me through a couple different
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compression algorithms where I can I can
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usually drop the file size sometimes in
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half
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um Without Really any loss of image
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quality they do give you like a little
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slider so you know it’s like 80 percent
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is usually I think the default setting
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and most of the time that’s perfectly
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fine sometimes you can push it down even
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further to 70 or 60 percent depending on
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the image and and get away with it
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especially with things that are like
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background images
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you can usually compress those a little
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bit further because nobody’s really
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looking at the background images as much
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as for for example like a
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you know like a an image that you’re
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supposed to focus on