The speed at which your website loads will drastically affect the experience your users have when they navigate to your page. Ideally your website should load up quickly when a person navigates to it, otherwise they’ll be likely to click away, losing you the opportunity to lock in a new client.
Consider your own browsing habits. How much patience do you have for a website that does not load efficiently? Chances are if a site takes too long to load you move on to something else.
The last thing you want is for a potential client’s first experience with your firm to be an aggravatingly slow loading time on your website. For this reason, it makes sense to embrace what developers often refer to as “lazy loading.”
What is lazy loading, and how can you implement it in your website?
The term “lazy loading” refers to a technique web designers use to make sure a page loads as quickly as possible. In this process, the website only loads the images at the top, above the fold. Any images or other elements below the fold (where you need to scroll down the page) don’t load until the user starts scrolling.
This means rather than trying to load everything on a website all at once, instead it only loads as needed. For website users, this means it looks like the image had already loaded by the time they scroll down to see it.
There are a variety of ways you can get the most out of lazy loading for your website. Consider the following tips:
- Optimize images: Depending on the way the image is being used on your website, you may or may not need a large resolution or file size. Compress or shrink when necessary to ensure faster loading speeds.
- Reduce redirects: Redirects extend loading time for pages. Cut them out whenever possible.
- Improve server response time: The faster your website is able to communicate with the server, the faster the website will be able to load.
- Minimize custom code: There are certain types of CSS, HTML and other types of code that might slow down loading times on your website. Don’t get overly fancy with your designs when it’s not necessary.
- Prioritize: You need to have a balance between website experience and website aesthetics. Consider this as you plan out the design of your site and how you can best implement lazy loading.
For more tips, contact us at Conroy Creative Counsel.
This post was originally published at Conroy Creative Counsel at this link: https://conroycreativecounsel.com/how-lazy-loading-speeds-up-your-website/