A little reading, a lot of ideas

Have the fastest website possible

Did you know that 53% of visi­tors leave a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load? Already, in 2012, Amazon calcu­la­ted than each addi­tio­nal second of loading was making them lose 1.6 billion US dollars per year.

Your websi­te’s loading speed is impor­tant for the expe­rience of your visi­tors, but also for Google, that takes it into account for clas­si­fying your pages. You must then assure to have the fastest website possible.

Keep your image formats and your librai­ries up to date

A few simple methods can you help you with opti­mi­zing the previous point:

• Reduce file sizes: images taken by a smart­phone can be very heavy, up to tens of mega­bytes. Given that the ideal size should not be higher than 0.5 mega­bytes, it is possible to compress them using tools like TinyJPG. The file format type can also have an impact, it is impor­tant to choose a recent one (WebP, Progres­sive JPG, etc.).
• Keep exter­nal depen­den­cies up to date : a website can often call different exter­nal librai­ries whether it’s for styling, fonts or for adding features. These librai­ries can also be heavy to load, it is then impor­tant to choose them well and delete those we don’t use.
• Verify plugins (in Word­press) : in the case of a website made with Word­press, it often happens that multiple plugins were instal­led but are not used. These plugins can have exter­nal depen­den­cies that are slow to load. It is neces­sary to filter them to not slow the website for no reason.

Protect your websi­te’s inte­grity

You might have wonde­red your­self why is there an opened or closed lock before a websi­te’s URL. This lock iden­ti­fies the SSL certi­fi­ca­tion of the page: it is a kind of digi­tal ID card that authen­ti­cates that the connec­tion between you and the website is safe.

To improve user’s safety, search engines takes into account the SSL certi­fi­cate in their refe­ren­cing. It is then impor­tant to make sure that your website holds a SSL certi­fi­cate. Learn more

To secure your website, the best is to talk to your deve­lo­per, or if you have a Word­press website, this plugin can help you add a SSL certi­fi­cate easily.